AFTER THE WORKSHOP

Today was filled with last minute preparations before we leave early tomorrow morning, so there was no time to paint or draw but I did receive a wonderful e-mail from Kate Cissell who attended the Littleton, CO. workshop. Here's what she wrote:

"Myrna, Hurrah! I finally finished my painting of Bill a couple weeks ago. Here're shots of it at the end of the June workshop in Littleton and the finished version. I love how it turned out. You got me to step out of my comfort zone with great results. Thank you!"

Great Job, Kate!

This is the last post until next Sunday. Here are the final words of wisdom from Bruce Mau to inspire you through the week. You will notice breaks in the sequencing of numbers. That's because I have edited the material to be relevant to us.


11. Harvest ideas. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life.
12. Keep moving. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.


17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.


20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.


21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.


22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."


28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.


29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.