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The Art (and Science) of Creativity

American Artscape | 2010 No. 3
NEA Arts cover no 3 2010
Cover by illustrator, photographer, and video maker Jorge Colombo, finger-painted on an iPhone, using the app Brushes. "Creativity happens in the mind," suggested Colombo about the cover, "but there are so many little tools to keep things going. I treat them as a floral arrangement: each ‘flower' glows and dances and explodes in a different way." A book on Colombo's iPhone finger paintings, entitled New York, will be published in 2011.
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Creativity, however, isn't only restricted to making art. In everyday life, we also use creativity in our workplace and our leisure time. Whether playing a video game or sport, solving a complex logistical problem, or trying out a recipe, creativity -- that is, aesthetic and scientific problemsolving -- is at work.

How art is made is cloaked in mystery, not just to the audience but also, in many cases, even to the artist. How does creativity work? How do you know when the artwork is finished? What is "productive failure" and how is it important to the creative process? How do you become creative?

Creativity, however, isn't only restricted to making art. In everyday life, we also use creativity in our workplace and our leisure time. Whether playing a video game or sport, solving a complex logistical problem, or trying out a recipe, creativity -- that is, aesthetic and scientific problemsolving -- is at work. In this issue we've asked several practicing artists about their creative process in various art disciplines, from music to theater, from visual arts to folk arts. We're also talking with other creative practitioners -- a scientist, a game designer -- about how creativity relates to learning and thinking creatively in other disciplines.

Included in this Issue

Cartography for the Land of Ideas

Talking Creativity with Maria Popova
Mary Zimmerman

Child's Play

Making New Worlds with Director Mary Zimmerman

Traditionally Innovative

Pat Courtney Gold Reflects Contemporary Wasco Life in Baskets
Woman in crowd holding a thumbs up sign.

Holding a Mirror to the World

The Art of Playing Games

Creativity in Collaboration

The Kronos Quartet Breaking Artistic Boundaries

No One Can See Like I See

A Conversation with Kerry James Marshall and Cheryl Lynn Bruce
Man standing against railing

Fertile Ground

David Edwards and the Intersection between Art and Science
Environmental artwork in Arizona desert.

Five Things You Should Know About Environmental Artist Lorna Jordan

Drowned in the Arts

2005 NEA National Heritage Fellow Chuck Brown made Jo Reed's list of top five fave podcasts she's done with musicians. Photo by Tom Pich

Wind Me Up, Chuck!

A Talk with Chuck Brown
Audio Available
Image from one of Mike Weber's works of two women.

Dipped in Glass: Breathing Life Back into Vintage Photographs

Video Available
slide reading: What is Creativity? NEA staff address the unanswerable question.

What is Creativity?

Video Available

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