In July I interviewed Bay Area artist Christopher Martin who was also doing a residency at The Space Program at the time. Chris is a perpetually curious person who is always looking for the secret thing behind the thing, the hack, the trick. I first saw his work, which was inspired by American Traditional tattoos like those by Sailor Jerry, at the ICA San Francisco in 2022. I was impressed by the scale of the work, the clarity of vision of the designs, and the limited color palette.
One of the main themes that came up during our conversation was the things that we take for granted as a fixed part of our lives, our physical world, and our social fabric. Martin talks about one of his projects at The Space Program residency that highlights this practice of “breaking things down to their essence and then re-imagining them.”
Like with this residency I’m thinking about, what is a flag? Why have we not changed up the flagpole in hundreds of years? We just have this one pole that we take for granted.”
This inability to see beyond a prescribed meaning or function of an object is called functional fixedness, and it is one of the great barriers to creativity and problem-solving. The flag pole is an apt metaphor for the inherently racist structures that are built into our institutions in the US, and the way that our government has been shaped around them. But in a broader sense, it is a stand-in for everything in our life that we can’t see as a point of negotiation or an opportunity for growth.
Over the weekend I saw a talk on creativity by future TSW guest, Tony Barnstone, who created The Radiant Tarot deck. I will write more about his journey when I have him on, but Barnstone spent 12 years submitting his deck to get published. TWELVE YEARS. I know there are other stories out there like that, but whenever I hear them I am awed by the stamina and resilience of the person.
The reason I bring him up is that his talk highlighted the way our understanding of creativity has evolved and what “creativity experts” have determined are the main creative blocks. My own google research unearthed this article by the Interactive Design Foundation that resonated with me.
In addition to fixedness in routines and ways of seeing the world, other blocks to creativity include:
perfectionism
fatigue ( I mean, yeah)
negative self-talk
overwhelm with larger projects
Coincidentally, I have been preparing for a panel talk at the ICA San Francisco in early November on creative blocks and was interested to hear that this nebulous subject had of course been put under the microscope and systematized. This list and the other research I found are interesting because they point to resources that we all have at our disposal, but also they show how similar we all are in our stuckness.
Similar to being depressed or anxious, being creatively blocked can feel like being on a ship out at sea without a sail. It’s isolating and counterintuitive. The more you think about it, the worse it gets. Most of the solutions to creative blocks are about introducing play and doing something physical to get you back in your body, and out of your head.
What I think this research has missed out on is the X factor of divine intervention and the channeling of ideas from other sources, which science has ruled out since the advent of neuroscience and Freud. After Barnstone’s talk, I asked what he makes of an anecdote from
’s Big Magic.The anecdote, in brief, is that Gilbert met Ann Patchett at a conference. At the time they met, she was writing a novel about a secretary working at a construction company that did most of its work in the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. She had languished on this project and didn’t mention it in their meeting.
A year or so later Gilbert and Patchett met again and this time compared notes on what they were working on. They were surprised to find out that Patchett too was working on a novel and, get this, with almost exactly the same plot, plus or minus a few details. She had started it shortly after meeting Gilbert, but again they had never discussed the book. And Gilbert had all but put it down because life had gotten in the way.
In Big Magic, Gilbert offers that maybe the idea for the novel had jumped from her to Patchett, who ultimately published it as State of Wonder in 2011. In my humble opinion, that’s as good of an answer as any to a mysterious series of events. My question for Barnstone at the talk and more generally is, where does this anecdote fit into the research about creativity? Are we making room for this type of unexplainable phenomenon and the possibility of this greater source of knowledge that we are all connected to?
Where do you think creativity comes from?
If you are in the Bay Area and are interested in attending the panel discussion at the ICA SF, you can reserve your spot at the free event here on Eventbrite.
Also coming up, a live event in Los Angeles at Lauren Powell Projects on Friday, November 30 from 3-5pm. Stay tuned for more details!