What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

In this module, I wanted to delve into the old East Asian Buddhist tradition of using art as a form of meditation, freeing the mind of its rational constraints and leading to samadhi or meditative awareness. I did this by both developing skills in calligraphy itself as well as attempting a form of meditation while practicing those skills and making the pieces above. The result, I hope, is some appearance of spontaneity and creativity, the two terms that anyone would use to describe the works of calligraphy that Buddhist monks in China, Japan, and Korea made while immersed in their happy, cheerful meditation.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

The most interesting thing that I learned while painting the Chinese characters was how challenging it is to attain any sort of balance or beauty with them. A simple downward brushstroke takes many months or perhaps years of practice to look even half-decent to a person who knows calligraphy. I did not get to this stage over the course of the project; what I did do was get a very brief look into the complexity of this medium – how the characters that you paint with the brush are not so much those that you paint but those that are left behind by the brush itself. Any stroke, whether it be a horizontal line or a dot, can very candidly suggest the calligrapher’s state of mind when painting it, meaning that any frustration or hesitance is immediately visible in the forms of the characters. This is perhaps the harshest aspect of calligraphy – each stroke is permanent and irrevocable, and cannot be embellished afterward. Not only does each brushstroke reveal your skill with the ink, but it will also reveal your ability to leave distracting thoughts behind and pool all of your mental energies into a single movement of the hand.

Poem Translation

The pieces above are renditions, in various styles of calligraphy, of three poems that I composed in a kind of bad Classical Chinese; the English translations are here:

Regular Style Poem

In the snore of my dog and the sound of my
Mother cooking dinner,
I hear Buddha’s joyful laugh;
Just as there are many drops of water but only one
Pond,
So are there many Buddhas but only one
Dharma.

Semi-Cursive Poem

Alone I walk to the pond,
Looking for solitary ducks to feed with my
Brown paper bag.

Cursive Poem

The perpetual sound of hail on the window –
Instead of my friends’ happy chatter,
Every day I hear only this.

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

My goals for the module were to increase my confidence in my creative abilities and be secure in my creative process. I achieved this by trying a variety of creative tools, like brainstorming and making mood boards. Through the process of being creative and learning how to weave, I slowly became confident in myself and in my final product.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I learned that there is no one “correct” way to be creative. I also learned that it’s great to try new things and learn skills from a beginner standpoint, which is what I did with weaving. Through this, I let go of some of my fears about not being creative enough and just let myself learn, change, and grow without judgment of the process.

My Artist Statement

For my module summative, I chose to weave an abstract tapestry inspired by nature. As Covid-19 has placed almost everybody in the world in a quarantine situation, I noticed that in the news and on social media images of places around the world thriving with the lack of human interaction. Although the piece is abstract and open for interpretation, I wove it with the intention of conveying the natural beauty of the earth. I wanted to imitate the idea of a sunsetting, with the notion being that all of the mess with the coronavirus will eventually end, as every day eventually does. Additionally, I drew inspiration from two French artists and combined my module summative with my language project.

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

I wanted to create an epic song with the help of my friend, who is a singer. I achieved them by collaborating with my friend and his dad and learning how to use GarageBand. I made three different songs, but the last one is the actual song, the first 2 were practices. Currently, the song is still a work in progress, so I will aim to showcase it in the future.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I learned that I could be creative with music and work well on a small team. Before, I thought I was not good at music production, but with this term, I became good at it. Also, my collaboration skills increased as well. I managed to get in contact with my friend and his dad and created a plan to record the song without me being there in person.

Driving Question: How might I grow my creativity during the COVID-19 crisis through exploring the science of creativity and innovation and experimenting with art?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

Learning about something my parents are passionate about and learning the basics about photography and applied geometry in nature was my objective of the module. I also wanted to grow my creative confidence and challenge myself to try something new. I did this by taking lessons from my dad, getting ideas, and researching. I think my final products and process portfolio reflect such.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I learned I have a hard time going with the flow and not planning photos. I thrive when I plan and trust myself. I challenged myself by trying something new and showing my work to others, when it’s not my strength and by mixing two areas of improvement in one summative and module. I met my expectations and went above them by taking photos that I am proud of and clearly show my progress. I’m impressed with what I achieved in some of my photos, the math and geometry in others, and how I saw the world finding more shapes. Photography is a great form to capture life and emotions, and it’s quite a complicated art form for me.

Driving Question: How might I grow my creativity during the COVID-19 crisis through exploring the science of creativity and innovation and experimenting with art?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

The main goal for me was: By the end of this module, I will be paying a lot more attention to the creative process itself, instead of the final product. I have experimented with the creative process. I have successfully implemented the incubation period in my creative process. When I first thought of the script, I had several scenes I wanted to do. I distanced myself from my ideas, which increased my productivity. After a walk, I listed all of the thoughts I had and I was impressed by how my list increased beforehand and after the incubation. With the evaluation stage, I am feeling much more eager to share and discuss my ideas with peers, family, and others, and I accept critique as constructive feedback. I think this term was a breakthrough for me in terms of understanding creativity. I am now paying a lot more attention to the process itself rather than focusing on the final product. After experimenting with all stages of the creative process, I enjoyed doing it, and I feel I am much more productive.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I feel that I have really grown in creativity and especially in the creative process. Before the module, I didn’t know that the usual things that I do when creating something have a scientific base behind them. This module helped to focus more on the process of creativity rather than on the final product. As for animation, I took a course on animation (Minecraft Animation), which helped to develop the main techniques such as lighting (Omni lights), animating (3D animating using Blender), interacting with the world (adding items, texture mapping), and rendering. I have successfully experimented with lighting, which looks great (according to feedback) and created a walk cycle, which is essential, and it can be used in future animations. I set up the characters, added skin, changed eye color, and so on.

Driving Question: How might I grow my creativity during the COVID-19 crisis through exploring the science of creativity and innovation and experimenting with art?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

My goal for this module was to grow my creativity by learning more about my creative process through something that I like and that I’m passionate about, which is fashion. Through my process, I was intentional about exploring different things that affected my creativity, such as my environment, and in the end, I created sketches of five dresses each inspired by traditional Moroccan fashion and elements.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

This module allowed me to grow a lot creatively, especially when it comes to things I wasn’t necessarily confident in or didn’t have a lot of skills at. I feel like I’m a lot more comfortable experimenting and taking risks than I was before. I also learned a lot about sketching specifically. It was something very new for me, and there was a lot of trial and error before I managed to create the final product.

Driving Question: How might I grow my creativity during the COVID-19 crisis through exploring the science of creativity and innovation and experimenting with art?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

For this module, my intention was to have fun with painting and expand my skills by painting something I like: Frogs. I am really fascinated with poisonous frogs, not only because of how beautiful they are but also because of the interesting way they repel predators. I found these types of frogs have an effective metaphor for the current pandemic we are experiencing and chose to showcase that analogy through this project.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

I discovered a new passion for painting: I have always been interested in the medium but not had enough creative confidence to try it out. Being able to work on my painting skills through a project with so much creative freedom was a great way for me to discover and enhance my own skills.

Driving Question: How might I grow my creativity during the COVID-19 crisis through exploring the science of creativity and innovation and experimenting with art?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

My goals for this module were to grow my creativity, to understand the geometry needed to both make and understand my quilt, and to make something to symbolize the COVID-19 crisis. I feel that I have achieved all my goals by having a lot of patience and determination to figure out the many challenges.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

Again, patience I think was the biggest thing this module. In sewing, I needed to have patience in order to pin, sew, and press each individual piece. For my creative process, I learned that it is important to be patient and think all possible ideas before analyzing them and determining which one is best. Lastly, I needed a lot of patience in order to learn about the many factors that go into the math for a golden spiral.

Driving Question: How might I grow my creativity during the COVID-19 crisis through exploring the science of creativity and innovation and experimenting with art?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

For this project, we focused on graphic design and fashion, and we achieved them by completing our summative products, a magazine that contains COVID-19 fashion pieces like graphic t-shirts and face masks.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

Throughout the module, I wanted to focus on lessening the self-doubt that I had when coming up with new ideas. One of the biggest takeaways that I have was about how I approach feedback. Here’s a little bit from my reflection earlier this week, “After the feedback sessions, I realized that I tend to overthink my creative decisions sometimes and that usually leads to self-doubt. Having the feedback sessions so often has helped me refocus my attention to create something that I’m happy with and not actually have too much time to overthink. I’ve learned that I can work so much more efficiently when I’m not worrying about unnecessary things.” This was really helpful to learn since I’m going to start working on my mastery project soon and feedback is a crucial part of the whole mastery process. Now, I’m more aware of how I like to work, and when feedback is the most helpful to my process. -Gigi

Read the Student-produced Convo Magazine

Driving Question: How might I grow my creativity during the COVID-19 crisis through exploring the science of creativity and innovation and experimenting with art?

What were your goals for this module? How did you achieve them?

With this module, I wanted to both teach myself how to play guitar, as well as all of the various pieces needed to become a songwriter. My end goal was to write an acoustic guitar and vocal song heavily influenced by Midwest Emo music and Math Rock (originally simply about the world at large, which later morphed into my own life due to a break up with my long time girlfriend). I started a complete novice in both my playing ability as well as composing, and both due to a substantial amount of inspiration from my chosen genre and my experimentation created my first complete piece of music, “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” Due to my fresh perspective on learning guitar, I was able to reach my rather lofty goal of this completed track.

What did you learn about yourself or about your creative process or about your medium?

During this project, I became much more in tune with myself by presenting my creations to an outside audience, feeling comfortable enough to use my own experiences as inspiration, and getting feedback based on personal projects. I had only first picked up acoustic guitar two months ago, so I had to work with the limitations of my writing and performing skill levels. The result was all done in one take because I wanted my final recording to be proof of my competency at guitar, not at audio editing software.