Decide. Execute. Assess. Redo: A Daily Art Challenge

For the second year in a row, I undertook an art challenge for the month of April. In case you were unaware, April is #NationalPoetryMonth. Perhaps you are thinking, “that sounds like a month designed for and observed by English/Language Arts teachers.” I’m pretty certain that is what some of my students were thinking.

Although this post is not meant to be a defense of poetry, I will say this: good poetry amazes me. It stuns me. It wakes me. Like a perfectly executed 3 chord riff, a poem relies on so little — a sharply worded observation and an attention to language that can otherwise seem so commonplace. And it relies on so much — the desire by poets to take an active interest in our world and share what they see, what they think they know, and what they know they don’t know, with the rest of us. Like any other art, when a poet makes it click. . .magic.

Back to my self-imposed challenge. I decided that for each day of April I would use Snapchat to illustrate a bit of a poem. And that’s about it. While I allowed myself to import images from my camera roll, I decided I would only use the editing tools available within the app: filters, cut-outs, drawing, and text. No outside photo editors. I think I stuck to it. The only other major requirement was to post by midnight. I think the closest I got was 11ish, which was close enough to make me worry. I also knew I had to make room on each post for the poet’s name and date. I know I forgot that last one a few times.

Pretty quickly I discovered a few of things:

1. Restrictions are useful. I guess this was less of a discovery than a reminder. I remember watching The Five Obstructions some years back. Lars Von Trier challenges Jorgen Leth to remake one of Leth’s film. Each time, Von Trier gives him obstructions to the creative process. The problem-solving Leth employs is pretty spectacular. It was probably the first time I understood how limits can bolster creative thinking. I am also a big fan of On Kawara's Today Series, in which the Japanese conceptual artist attempted to paint each day's date every day. He painted each canvas according to some pretty strict guidelines for size, color, and lettering. Furthermore, if he failed to finish a canvas by midnight, he threw out it away. When I have watched and read about both of these art experiments, I have tried to imagine how it would feel to create under such a regimen. While my project is small by comparison, it still gave me insight into how and why an artist would choose to limit their options.

2. Setting out to make something everyday greatly impacts your schedule. This must seem obvious, but it was powerful nevertheless. Since each one could take me anywhere from 45 minutes — 2 hours, I found myself looking at downtime quite differently. A free fifteen minutes before a class? Work on my #poemsnap for that day. Ten minutes of waiting for my daughter’s track practice to end? Work on my #poemsnap for that day. My wife needs five minutes before we watch The Americans? #Poemsnap time.

Recently I have heard interviews and read articles that make a case for boredom. At issue is the way so many of us use our devices to fill in moments of boredom with distraction. According to these interviews and articles, when we give in to the distractions offered by our devices, we are robbing ourselves of time to be bored, which is time to crank up the imagination. This might have particularly insidious effects for younger people. My project gave me something to do in these moments: I was either working on the snap or reading poetry and finding voices that were new to me. It kept me invigorated and distractions became unnecessary. It focused my attention.

   

3. It is exciting to get it right. And scary. It was so satisfying to (almost) perfectly execute an illustration that captures a mood, an idea, a feeling of some lines of poetry. But it was also daunting because as soon as I posted the snap, I immediately started to think about the next day: the poem, the imagery, the shape of the text. Recently, I watched an episode of the documentary series, Abstract, that focused on the graphic artist Christoph Niemann. In it, he talks about the anxiety caused by success: can it be followed? Will there be another idea? Will he reveal himself to be a fraud? Niemann calls these "lucky moments" when he has "won the lottery." Of course, I am not comparing my #snapchatart to Niemann’s deadlines for New Yorker covers. But I grasped his point. As the month progressed, I was aware of not wanting to copy myself, of not replaying the same moves. It was rough.

I drew these hands on my iPhone screen!

If there is one other thing I loved about the project, it was spending so much time being intentional. I think this could be one of the greatest benefits of creative work. If I make thousands of decisions a day, which research suggests, most of them are done without much thought. Perhaps whole days go by without some overarching theme or reason. Or intention. But throughout April, I had a reason for each day. And when I was creating each snap, I was living intentionally. Decision upon decision. Execute. Assess. Perhaps redo. And then make more conscious decisions.

The scale of the work might be small, but the consequences, as it turns out, are massive.

Here is a link to the entire album. 

Snap To It: A Creative Challenge

April is National Poetry Month. This year, I decided to celebrate it by giving myself a challenge: create one original piece of Shapchat art each day that would combine some kind of visual with a line from a poem.

Going into the project, my main goal was to learn Snapchat. As a parent and teacher, I have seen it become the preferred social media platform for young people, so I wanted to get a sense of it. What I discovered, though, went beyond how to use the app. Here are 3 of the more important things I realized.

I like poetry.

Sounds funny coming from an English teacher, but I don’t spend a lot of time with poetry in my classes. Typically, I’ll throw 3-4 poems at my students over the course of a year. And these end up being my go-tos. Since this project required me to find 30 lines of poetry, I had to range far beyond the old standbys. This searching and reading reminded me of how powerfully poets combine language and brevity in order to convey their thoughts about the deepest, most complex questions confronting human beings.

Tim O’Brien, my favorite writer, says that all we have is 26 letters and a few punctuation marks through which we try to make ourselves understood to others. Poets are in the business of using these letters and punctuation marks to make concise observations about our world. Gabriel Orozco, one of my favorite artists, says that he wants to be intimate with the world, and art is the attempt to build bridges so others can also experience that intimacy. Poets use a slender toolbox indeed in order to build their bridges.

I like to use my technology for a purpose.

Here I am thinking about the way so many of us fall into the scroller trap. Think about how often you or people you know fill downtime with tech time. For years, I resisted getting a phone. Now that I have one, I find myself reaching for it when I have a few minutes with nothing to do. Like when I am picking up my kids from soccer practice, am in a waiting room, am on a train. More often than not, I am looking for nothing in particular. It is mindless scrolling. I have tried to be more aware of this tendency and to resist it.

My poetry project gave me a goal or destination for these moments. Throughout April, when I found myself reaching for my phone to fill in some seemingly empty moments, I went to poets.org or the poetry foundation and read poems. I was always on the lookout for the poems and even specific lines that made me say, “whoa! yes!” For the lines that gave me that chill factor. Instead of tuning out during the downtime, this searching kept me thinking. Interestingly, I found myself putting away the phone after a particularly compelling poem in order to think about what I just read and how I might use it in my project. As an educator, I have participated in numerous conversations about helping kids to become thoughtful, critical, and creative citizens, online and off. This project helped me to achieve these goals.

Speaking of creativity. I like to create (and to give myself creative challenges).

A few years back, I read a book by David Gauntlett called Making is Connecting. It is wonderful and I highly recommend it. In his writing, Gauntlett offers his definition for everyday, personal creativity. For Gauntlett, this kind of creativity is typified by making something novel for oneself. Too often, he found that definitions of creativity were written with society in mind. For something to be considered creative, it needed to be judged and accepted by a community of experts. Like Gauntlett, this view of creativity ignores the creative urge we all feel. When I made the Snapchat images, I was primarily concerned with making something pleasing to me. I knew others would see my creations. That is the point of social media. However, my main concern was with my experience. How did I feel while in the process? What kinds of decisions did I need to make as I created? How well did I execute those decisions? What did I think about the finished work?

Taken together, these questions and this thought process gave me a sense of autonomy, a sense of agency, and a deep sense of satisfaction. Consider how many decisions we make everyday, and, of those decisions, how many are done without thinking. This kind of creative project provided me with thoughtful decisions. Color choices, layouts, text position: for such small works, the choices could be almost overwhelming. But these choices required intentionality, and I liked that feeling.

Ultimately, the project led me to this: Yes, I could be a creator, not a consumer. I could bring something new into the world, even if on a small scale. I could translate an idea into a tangible work. I feel accomplishment, even when I struggled. Or especially when I did. Well worth the investment.

     

Here is a link to the entire album.