Creativity Books List I of III

Summer 2013 reading pile; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2013

Inspired by a list of 20 52 essential books on creativity, I've compiled my own and am publishing it in three sections. They are in no particular order. Books with highlighted numbers resonated with me the most.

1. Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch (I have read this twice)
2. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon (I have read this twice)
3. Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon (I have read this twice)
4. The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
5. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (I have read this three times)
6. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard (I have read this twice)
7. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
8. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey (I have read this twice)
9. The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
10. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
11. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
12. On Writing by Stephen King
13. Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your World by Warren Berger
14. It is Beautiful Then Gone by Martin Venezky (I have read this 4 times)
15. Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith
16. Mapping the Intelligence of Artistic Work by Anne West

Quotes: Buckminster Fuller

"Mistakes are great, the more I make the smarter I get." – Buckminster Fuller

Studio Series: Leaf rubbings

Rubbings of clover leaves © Karen Thiessen, 2014

The nice thing about my intuitive mark-making practice (also known as my Lenten practice) is that anything goes. Now that the garden is alive again, maybe too alive with all the plants that need to be thinned out, I have fresh leaves to take rubbings of. These colours and shapes are informing my new Poetic Memory series.

Quotes: Sheldon Kopp

"Transformations require that we let go of familiar ways of doing things, without yet knowing what we will do next." 

–– Sheldon Kopp (1929-1999), American psychotherapist and author 

via: ArtPropelled July 8, 2014

Studio Series: Ampersand repeat pattern

Ampersand grave rubbing repeat pattern © Karen Thiessen, 2014

My Lenten intuitive mark-making practice continues. Here's a repeat pattern that I made of a rubbing of the ampersand on my late baby brother's grave that I made during a recent visit. It's a fairly bland pattern, but it's a beginning of a thought process. We all have to begin somewhere.

Quotes: Derrick Jensen

" Passion, love, hate, fear, hope. The best writing springs from these sources. Life itself springs from these sources, and what is writing without life? –– Derrick Jensen, Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution, p. 19

Studio Series: Remington Rand ampersand pattern

Remington Rand ampersand © Karen Thiessen, 2014

Early this summer a great uncle died just short of his 100th birthday. Following the funeral, he was interred in the same cemetery as my brother. After the graveside service, I visited my brother's grave and looked at it for a long time. I had no camera, no materials with which to take rubbings, and no gardening tools to clean up the grass that encroached on his stone. My only resources were my eyes and time. An ampersand jumped out at me. Two weeks later, I took rubbings, cleaned up the grave, and took photographs. For now, here's a simple repeat pattern of ampersands that I made with an old Remington Rand typewriter.