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Home / Posts tagged “Austin Kleon”

Austin Kleon

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Austin Kleon

Echoes of Generosity: Lagniappe and Psychitude

March 2, 2013 November 8, 2018

Last week my ceramics compatriot Karen Hansen posted about a workshop we recently attended. She titled her post “Generosity” and it was a goodie because she observed the same scenario I did in the workshop and then went on to express appreciation for how some of the artists in the audience had freely enriched her ceramics life – perhaps more than the presenter had.

I knew seven other folks in attendance that day as well. I had carpooled with three of them.  On the ride home, it was clear the overall impressions we independently arrived at were similar, some kinder than others. (There was some high dudgeon hooting and hollering from the backseat.) I remember saying I got one or two new tips and felt OK in spite of the more challenging aspects to the day.

Our unquestionably fabulously skilled presenter had begun the session by issuing a few cautionary remarks about photo-taking,  re-copying the handout and about online sharing of her methods. It was a bit off-putting. OK fine, I thought, she’s from a larger playing field and has had problems with this. She even mentioned something about being under contract. Respect.

But then she stinted on her whole presentation, both in time use and content.  We spent most of the four hours of active demo-time watching her waver over design decisions,  handbuild with wet clay (s-l-o-w) and  then brush on layers and layers of underglazes, drying each one with a heat gun (s-l-o-w-e-r.)  For  you non-clay readers, this would be like asking cooking show viewers to watch menu-planning, ingredient assembling and the dough rise. There were a few stories and questions during these excruciating procedures, but not enough to divert us from that Waiting Around Sensation – in a chilly studio with hard chairs, to boot.  In the final half hour or so, she hurriedly dug into what most of us had come to learn and ask questions about, and yet did not dish much beyond the obvious. Using stains, underglazes and carving are Ceramics 101 topics, and the techniques she shared, while skilled, are not remarkable.

One of the van riders called it stingy. Ouch!

I have to admit it was a first for me to watch a ceramics expert apply the brakes to not only how they showed their process, but to attempt to control how their audience could or could not discuss it with others later. One of the things I love dearly about the clay community the world over is the genial willingness to share special secrets and explain how-tos, knowing that those who hear and see them will:

A. Perhaps not be any further interested in working like that. Thank you very much.

B. Maybe not understand them clearly enough to do them because it’s blowing their minds.

C. Be more interested in cherry-picking and adapting those methods to their own way with clay.

Or, D. Try to replicate the style and techniques which will just never, ever come out the same.

Outright rip-offs are another kind of hacking issue entirely. But if you don’t want to risk being copied, don’t give demonstrations!

Karen quoted Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist. He encourages us to Share Like An Artist too, because everything is a mash-up.

Let me add some generosity encouragement from Seth Godin: “Do the (extra) work…The habit of doing more than is necessary…is priceless.” This means to freely give your enthusiasts more than they came for. Explain it all. Throw in the 13th donut!  Tuck in a free notecard. Offer dessert on the house. (The link for Seth goes to his Free Stuff page.) The idea of giving more for good measure is so engrained in some cultures they have a word for it. My favorite is the Creole word lagniappe: the extra lil something that sweetens everyone’s part of the deal.

Abundance. Good Will. Buzz. Leo Babauta calls it “psychitude”, the stoke from giving generously that adds meaning and warmth to our days. I would have enjoyed sharing the unique and quirky things I learned in that workshop with you, illustrated with interesting photos, but I quickly put my camera away that morning and haven’t yet looked at my notes or the handout.

~Liz Crain, who seems to have the song  “Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave” by Dave Mason stuck in her head.

 

 

 

 

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Categories: Community, Studio Journal
Tags: Austin Kleon, dave mason, generosity, Karen Hansen, lagniappe, Leo Babauta, polka dot clay studio, psychitude, Seth Godin, sharing, steal like an artist

101 Things to Steal From Your Paracosm

February 6, 2013 November 8, 2018

This post doesn’t  have 101 items, but it talks about about someone else’s 101.

Involved here are three writers who continue to tighten the chinstrap on my creative process thinking cap: Seth Godin, Austin Kleon and Kit White.

Seth advocates imagining possible new worlds. Austin dishes on how to trick out our idiosyncratic creative arenas. Kit gets down with the 101 ways we need to pay homage, dues and attention to our art .

If I could make a Venn Diagram of Seth/Austin/Kit I would get the kernel that is this post, the seminal coalescence that resonates and feeds me.

Let’s work backwards, because you might not know what a paracosm is, any more than I did before I first read about it. Just understand that it’s a fantasy world, detailed and believable, at least to the fantasizer.  The most fundamental example is a kid with an imaginary friend, but whole genres in literature and film are devoted to this dynamic. Think Oz, Neverland, Avatar.

 

Seth Godin expands the concept of a paracosm from child’s play,  sci-fi, or magic realism, to include all conceptualizing outside of our comfortable world view. It’s a detailed answer to What If______?,  which is the lead-in question vital to invention, creation, even survival. He goes on to say it’s a disloyalty to yourself and your future to NOT employ this kind of exploration and hypothesizing. If our current cosmos also easily admits alternate or evolved versions as a paracosmos, we are more informed and more resilient. Plan B in 4D!

 

 

 

 

 

Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist, 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative actually includes 34 Sub-Things and 27 Deleted Scenes Things. So that’s 71 Things he shares. I especially liked:

New ideas are mash-ups of other ideas: Yup.

School yourself: Google everything. Go deeper.

Use Your Hands: Duh, I’m a clay artist! 

Don’t Throw Any of Yourself Away: Find out about everything that calls you. (It’s for the art historians to find the unity in all you do.)

Be Boring: But only in your habits and life, so you may break loose in your art. 

Choose What to Leave Out: Self-editing helps you get to the heart of what you want to say.

 

Kit White’s 101 Things to Learn in Art School, another squarish little black book, recalls Austin’s in that it makes points and holds brief discussions about them. Yet the points  Kit makes fan out in a different quadrant. I’d put them in the School Yourself area of Austin’s book, but they go much deeper than that. Sometimes in studio classes there just isn’t the time and inclination to cover theory and a person could leave art school without much more than a whiff of it.  While Kit may echo Austin (or vice versa) with things like #89 Eliminate the nonessential, he captures my fancy with these:

#2 Learn to draw. So glad I did! You too. 

#16 Words are images. I’ve always loved fonts. Words add meaning and form.

#28 An idea is only as good as its execution. If you think nobody will notice where you fudged your detailing, you’re wrong.

#53 Sculpture occupies the same space as our bodies. Working in clay, this is crucial. Human-sized is my new middle name.

 

What to make of these three? The takeaway always involves the personal. You will read these books and blogs and extract meaning all your own. But you will extract meaning, no doubt. If I were to boil it all down to one sentence as it pertains to me: Your personal paracosm is the prime mover and you owe it to your best creative self to cultivate and understand it deeply and to foster it in any medium you’re attracted to in the best way you and your hands know how.

~Liz Crain, is a ceramic artist who tries to make simple meaning out of complex input.

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Categories: Creativity, Studio Journal
Tags: 101 things to learn in art school, Austin Kleon, ceramics, clay, creative process, Kit White, learn to draw, paracosm, self editing, Seth Godin, steal like an artist
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