Banning the phrase "I am not creative."

After our last class critique, I decided to ban two phrases from use in the clay studio. I banned the phrase "I am not creative" and I banned the phrase "I am not artistic."

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

These phrases show up during critiques, usually followed by "...but" and then an explanation of what the student created for his or her art project. In part, I dislike these statements because they generally aren't true, but they also cause further problems.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

Immediately, in the critique, a statement like this is used as a shield to protect the speaker from judgment or criticism of their creative or artistic pursuits. No one wants to point out a structural error in a sculpture made by a person who just said it wasn't any good. But these statements cause trouble outside of the critique as well. The student who says this is reminding herself (as well as her classmates) that she is not going to be successful in this type of work. He is reminding the instructor not to expect much from him. And if students hear these reinforcements enough, even from themselves, they are likely to start believing them.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

Initially I hadn't made a big deal of this little verbal tic. When it showed up in critique, I would shrug it off and move the discussion on. Occasionally I would gently negate it, telling the student that he or she could do the work, but I didn't strongly or loudly react to the statement. I think that was a mistake. I'm starting to think I should have made a big hairy deal out of it right away and addressed the issue head on.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

I've been thinking about this for a while now. I've been thinking, also, about my role as the instructor in this conversation. I need to run a safe and supportive studio. I need to teach the students how to work with clay. Somewhere in there, I should be encouraging the students to challenge themselves, try new things, express themselves, and take risks.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

In short, I should be teaching the students to be creative. Of course I should; it's an art class. But like "art", "creativity" is a word that gets used with the assumption that you already know what it is. I don't remember being taught a pat definition of creativity (or "art" for that matter) and I don't remember specifically sitting down to be taught creativity in class.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

I took plenty of art classes when I was in school, but mostly I remember being taught how to mix paint and how to measure for perspective and how fast the wheel should spin and what settings to use to control the focus on the camera. So much of what I specifically remember learning in art classes, from first grade through graduate school was how to manipulate or control a particular medium. The creativity that was taught, was mixed right in with the course content and the techniques and was never identified as a separate thing.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

There is a popular belief that creativity is something innate; that you either have it or you don't. I don't get the impression that that view is backed by much actual research, but it is a stereotype and I see the evidence of the stereotype's strength in my classes. There is the idea that some people are creative and some are not. Some people are artistic, some are not. Like it's a black and white issue, like there is no middle ground. And students who think they are "not creative" like to identify themselves right away, for some of the reasons mentioned above.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

I remember, as a kid, being praised for being creative. I suppose I learned what creativity was by doing whatever it was that got recognition. But when I try to think of a specific instance, I keep coming up with examples of things I worked really hard at. I drew this dragon in elementary school. My dad ended up framing it and it still hangs in my parents house. I worked hard on that dragon. I took so long on it, Mrs. Buckingham had to assign Derek Johnson to help me color in the cave in back so we could move on to the next project. (You can always tell a story's importance in your memory when you know the people's names 30 years later.) Derek colored with the chalk on its side, which basically ruined the cave. The cave was ruined, however, not because Derek lacked creativity, but because he took a shortcut that I wasn't willing to take. And it was a perfectly logical shortcut, one that Mrs. Buckingham, no doubt, approved of because she had a class to teach.

The famous dragon, still on my parents' wall. Dragon by Rachel, cave and volcano by Derek.

A few years later, I discovered this stuff called Friendly Plastic and started melting plastic jewelry and selling it to people at my parents' workplaces. I made a lot of these jewelry pieces because I liked making them. I kept trying new combinations and cutting new shapes because it was fun. My parents gave me free reign of the stovetop for these projects and people praised my work. Was this creativity, or the logical effect of time and effort?

Four cranes folded from one piece of paper. I used to do this but with, like 9 cranes together.

One last example from my own biography. I used to do a lot of origami. I followed the directions for making cranes and boxes and cats and people. Eventually I went through the basic origami books and started doing these origami crane sets cut from a single sheet of paper. I spent a lot of time, but I certainly wasn't being creative; I just had a more advanced book now, and it showed me how to make the connected cranes. Increasing the number was simple application of knowledge and a level of comfort with the basic skill.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

I was encouraged in my "creativity" by teachers, parents, whomever, and I was encouraged and allowed to make a mess and get more materials and take more time and leave tiny cranes in every single corner of the house and van. But I think a lot of my students have a different experience growing up. I think a lot of kids are told, at some point, that they are not creative. I simply hate the idea that any kid could be told he or she is not creative. It just seems pointlessly mean. But I also think adults can communicate a similar message by criticizing kids for doing things that are not standard: painting an orange sky, for example, instead of blue.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

A friend of mine was just telling me about a teacher complaining, in a class of early elementary school students, that the kids' drawings were too sloppy. Why anyone would ever criticize the drawing of a child is beyond me, but it seems like a good way to make a kid dislike drawing. Another friend told me she remembered, when she was a kid, being told that her mountains were wrong because she colored them purple. Just think about that for a minute (while humming our America the Beautiful).

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

So based on early experience, adult influences send kids down two paths. The creative, praised, artsy kids (who are really just the kids with strong support for this sort of thing) get handed Friendly Plastic and are offered cave painting assistance and allowed extra time to make stuff, while the not-creative, not artsy kids with purple mountains (majesty), orange skies and messy drawings, get, I don't know video games and a mop? Math homework? Uh, Barbies? I don't actually know what they get. But remember, the creative kids also created sloppy drawings with purple mountains and orange skies, they were just allowed to draw some more.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

So now we come back to the present and the adult (sometimes teenage) students in my college-level clay classes. These classes include the kids who grew up with praise and support and the identical kids, in my opinion, who were corrected and steered away from certain colors and certain approaches. The first group has learned that they are creative and may be more comfortable taking risks, trying new things, and expressing themselves. The second group knows they are not in the special creative group that is allowed to take these risks, try new things and express themselves. In fact, the simple act of signing up for the class might already be outside their comfort level.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

While at first I thought my concern about the use of phrases like "I'm not creative" was just a minor semantic issue and not worth addressing in class, I am starting to change my mind. I am starting to think that the semantic issue might capture a big part of the heart of what I should be doing in that class.

Artwork by a student who may or may not be creative.

I suspect that these statements, and the underlying beliefs that undergird them, are much more difficult for students to work through than technical difficulties that have to do with handling the clay or the potter's wheel. I think I'm going to have to ponder further, how to address these issues in class.

"...a genuinely creative accomplishment is almost never the result of a sudden insight, a lightbulb flashing in the dark, but comes after years of hard work." -Mihaly Czikszentmihali

I also see important connections between creativity and failure (which I wrote about a while back). And I'm starting to consider the relationship between whether someone considers herself creative or artistic and how much time she spends on a task. When art is assessed, we often consider quality, effort and a creative approach. I wonder how often the first two overshadow or obscure the latter. I guess I'll write more about this later.