Tag Archives: Joshua Foer

Safety Net

I’ve been sifting through my Evernote files in order to do a bit of digital housecleaning. As tasks go, revisiting the diverse array of items collected there can be both enjoyable and interesting because it often results in new and unexpected ideas.

Midway

Work in progress   © Elizabeth Fram

Tools like Evernote and Pocket make it easy to file all sorts of data and images without the burden of storing paper. I never know when something I’ve saved — inspiration, business tools, specifics about art supplies, notes from my reading, calls for entry, etc. — will be useful, but sooner or later a need invariably crops up. That said, every so often it’s fruitful to review the whole lot, culling the bulk for what still resonates.

Skimming through a series of quotes saved from various readings, I found one to be particularly apropos to the new piece I’ve begun this week. At this early stage I don’t have much more than a sketchy idea of the endpoint I’m aiming for, so I know there will be plenty of trial and error ahead on the horizon. But leaning on previous lessons-learned will help me get the stitching off the ground, and I can consider the exercise a fresh opportunity to deliberately practice older methods while hopefully discovering new ways to mesh ideas with process.

Mid-Point

Work in progress   ©Elizabeth Fram

In discussing the idea of “deliberate practice”, Joshua Foer writes in his book Moonwalking with Einstein,

Deliberate practice, by its nature, must be hard.
When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend. In fact, in every domain of expertise that’s been rigorously examined, from chess to violin to basketball, studies have found that the number of years one has been doing something correlates only weakly with level of performance. Regular practice simply isn’t enough. To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes.

What a perfect testament to the desire we all have to keep trying. Some pieces make me feel a bit like I’m at the foot of a mountain that I haven’t yet figured out how to scale. The wisdom and encouragement of the above quote is reassuring, like a climbing harness or a safety net, lending support as I wrestle with the possibilities of where I want to take this piece and, perhaps more importantly, where it will eventually lead me.

Slant

Work in progress   © Elizabeth Fram      The stitched-resist dye in this new piece is the perfect example of deliberate practice. At this point I’ve stitched and dyed this pattern many, many times, but this time my goal was to separate the two sides of one length of cloth with opposing colors while still having the piece read as a whole. It’s a first shot at a seemingly simple idea, but tricky to accomplish, and one that will benefit from further practice.

Giving shape to a nebulous idea doesn’t come easily. I appreciate Foer articulating the importance of mindfully failing in order to succeed — an attitude that lightens the overall process.

If you’re interested in what Foer has to say about how important memory is to creativity, link back to this post.

Full

Work in progress   ©Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye on silk, approx. 18 x 24 inches

Linking Memory with Creativity

I am feeling the growing pains of exploration in the studio lately, which has led me to wonder: what steers the work we make in specific directions, and in turn puts our individual stamp on it?

Last week I read Moonwalking With Einstein ~ The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. I picked it up off the library shelf because I was curious about how the author trained his mind to ultimately win the US Memory Championship, developing the ability to accomplish such feats as memorizing the order of an entire deck of cards in a record 1 minute and forty seconds. I figured I ought to be able to pick up at least a few helpful tips to get me through the day more efficiently.

PorchChairs

Porch Chairs     ©2015 Elizabeth Fram

But, beyond disclosing the intricate techniques of the world’s top “mental athletes”, the meat of this fascinating book is Foer’s narrative regarding memory itself, including both cutting-edge research and, as stated on the book flap, “a surprising cultural history of memory”.

Concerning creativity, he drills home the point that everything we see and do is viewed through the lens of memory, which ultimately shapes our perspective of the world around us. Of course that means it also flavors the art that we make.  We may believe that a wonderful new line of thinking in approaching our work just “popped into our heads”, but it isn’t truly materializing from thin air. We have a lifetime of experiences to thank for any new path.

BowlsonCounter1

Bowls on Counter     ©2015 Elizabeth Fram

Think about what Foer writes: “The Latin root  inventio is the basis of two words in our modern English vocabulary: inventory and invention. And to a mind trained in the art of memory, those two ideas were closely linked. Invention was a product of inventorying. Where do new ideas come from if not some alchemical blending of old ideas? In order to invent, one first needed a proper inventory, a bank of existing ideas to draw on”.  In other words, consciously or unconsciously, we pull from our memories in order to fuse new connections between old ideas, solidifying those new concepts in the work we make.

Foer further states, “How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory.”

Lola

Lola     ©2015 Elizabeth Fram

It adds a whole new depth to any piece of art you make or view, don’t you think?