Sketching 105

From: Margo Jones
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013
To: Calvin Jones
Subject: Interview for Creative Writing

Hey Dad,

So I've come up with a couple questions for you for my Creative Writing assignment. Basically, the assignment is for me to conduct an interview with someone who has a creative mind. I thought of you right away!
My teacher is not interested in your background or how you started out, etc. That is only for the intro paragraph.
Questions and answers in the interview should go into depth about the creative process that goes on in your mind.

Here are some questions you can start to think about:

1. How do you deal with creative blocks?
2. Do you find that your mind is always creatively processing? Do you find you are always drawing creative conclusions to things you see and do in your everyday life?
3. Do you have a particular stimulation that helps with your creative process (coffee, music, drugs, environment, time of day, etc.)?
4. When you are painting, is there a reason you will decide to use a particular kind of paint over another? Does it depend on what you are trying to portray in your art? Have you had experiences using other tools that have not worked? Why, and why not?
5. Do you find yourself planning your next project/painting (in a constant brainstorm) or do your ideas come to your spontaneously?
6. If your ideas are spontaneous at times, do you feel it is necessary to immediately get them out (writing in a journal, typing up the idea, drawing/painting it right away) no matter what time of day it is / where you are?
7. That being asked, how do you usually brainstorm? - (writing, drawing, using a computer, etc.) Why do you have this method?
8. Do you find working on a deadline helps you or not? Why or why not? Does it cause stress or cause motivation? What are you previous experiences with deadlines (good and bad)?
9. Do you ever re-visit your work? Wish that you could improve it? Try to improve it? Is your work ever truly "finished" in your eyes? How do you know you are finally finished your project/art?
10. Because you have a post-secondary background with art, do you find it has helped you become a better artist now? Did you learn specific techniques and meet different people that you know for sure influenced you to be the artist that you are today? Are you happy you went to the school that you did?
11. Do you have / have you ever had a target audience? For example, if you were to enter into a competition, would you enter a piece that you know the judges would like?
12. Are competitions something you enjoy entering in? Does that help drive your creative process or limit it?
13. How long did it take you to really understand the benefits in constructive criticism?

I know there is a lot there but please take some time to really just think about them. You don't necessarily have to answer every single one. I am hoping that maybe you can think about those questions and I can Skype with you to confirm what you really mean by all of your answers. I'll work on an introduction paragraph and send it to you to make sure that it is accurate. For me to write it, I will need to know the following:

1. When did you start painting?
2. Did you paint throughout high school?
3. Growing up, did your family and friends support your love for art?
4. When did you decide you wanted to go to Emily Carr?
5. What years did you graduate, and with exactly which degrees?
6. Who are and who have been your top influential artists?

Thanks so much Dad. Talk soon!
Lots and lots of love,
xxxxxx Margo

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From: Calvin Jones
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:15:10 -0800
To: Margo Jones
Subject: RE: Interview for Creative Writing


Thanks for including me in your project, Margo! I feel very honoured.

Like the chalk message said outside my office today, “Everyone is Creative,” and I believe it! Creativity is why we humans are as successful a species as we are.

I’ve numbered the answers to correspond with your questions, hope this works for you. Sorry, some are long-winded.

1. I deal with creative blocks by doing something other than working on the problem at hand. Some people would say I’m procrastinating, but I’m creatively procrastinating by playing around with some other thing while processing the main problem in the background. Sleep is also a great way to overcome creative blocks.
2. Yes, my mind is always creatively processing. There’s always something that could be done better, approached better, designed better, managed better — you get the gist — and I’m always thinking how it could be more efficient and more approachable. Some things are scarier than others to deal with (for me, like personal interaction) and I usually put them off for quite a while before I deal with them.
3. Walking, sleeping, daydreaming are excellent creative stimuli. Coffee and drugs are really crutches, not legs.
4. I don’t paint as often as I used to, as you know I haven’t really painted much while you kids have been around, there isn’t space in the house. Lately, though, I have planned a series of paintings based on a very old technique called encaustic. It’s pigmented wax, kind of like painting with melted crayons. For me, art is also about technology, not just about painting. Back in the day, suspending pigment in oil and then painting with that solution (oil painting) was a revolutionary way to make pictures. The colours were vivid and the painting didn’t fade over time. Now we have LCD and LED monitors with computer software to make pictures, like Pixar does, and that’s revolutionary. But it’s not enough for me to make a cool picture with Adobe Photoshop, print it and then frame it. One has to consider what one is saying and gear the medium to the message. Encaustic is very sensitive to temperature — heat or cold will alter the picture — so it’s therefore a suitable medium to describe mind because the mind branches and evolves over time and is very fragile like the encaustic. Make sense?
5. “Next projects” are both spontaneous and planned. Once some subject has caught my attention, like “My Snow Day” by Margo Jones, then I plan and plan and plan how to turn it into a project. Perhaps a bit too much, but if I didn’t have to trim hedges, vacuum floors, iron shirts and design government reports and displays, my artwork would probably be finished a lot faster.
6. Sometimes I like to jot ideas down as soon as I think of them, but I know from my experience that if I have an idea, even if I momentarily forget it (a great idea I had in that dream, let’s say), it will return a little later. However, writing things down regularly is a very good practice — one that I hope to return to shortly. A sketchpad is an excellent catharsis if nothing else.
7. I usually brainstorm with my brain, a pencil and a sheet of paper, doodling and writing as I go. Emily Carr was excellent for brainstorming techniques. Fine Art at University of Regina was not so much, ironically. One thing I did learn that has stuck with me since Emily Carr and has always worked is that, when brainstorming, NEVER EVER EVER criticize any idea that comes out of the process. Treat the process like you’re just playing around — laugh, have fun, be goofy stupid. Criticism to weed out and refine ideas generated during brainstorming should only come well after the brainstorming process is exhausted. The Creative Director at Rethink in Vancouver uses a technique where he forces himself to write down anything to do with the subject he’s working on, kind of like a mind map, but in list form. Only when he’s completely exhausted does he then start to jam things together and refine ideas to come up with a solution to the problem he’s tasked with. That one works as well. There are many, I have a whole book of techniques, but unfettered play is the root of them all.
8. Deadlines do motivate, but do not necessarily yield good solutions to problems. That’s why it’s great to creatively procrastinate like I mentioned above. Play for me is an essential part of creative problem solving. When I’m goofing around on something that’s not critical, ideas arise that would not come within a very stressful, finite time limit. However, by keeping these playful ideas in my back-pocket, when a crisis does arise then I have an idea that I can re-jig to fit the problem. Make sense?
9. I always re-visit my work, it’s a curse. Even trimming the hedges, I see something I missed. Nuff said.
10. It is most definitely a benefit to have as much education as one can acquire, formal or informal. A formal education has its limits, but it does introduce you to people and concepts you would not ordinarily encounter at the grocery store, let’s say. Next to your Grandma Jones, my high school art teacher, Gary Woodward, was the first to encourage me (he wanted me to attend the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, which I couldn’t afford). After that, my professors at the UofR like Lynn Hughes, Ted Godwin and Jack Sures all encouraged and challenged me a great deal. I found this less so at Emily Carr, perhaps because I was older and less intimidated like I was at the UofR. However, one instructor — Deborah Shackleton — wouldn’t take any shit work. She was a photographer who really woke me up to considering what was in the frame. I learned a lot about presentation from her as well. A well considered idea is good, but a well considered idea that’s engagingly presented can be great. Informal education is just reading, watching, interacting in a playful manner so as to better understand everything around you, where you fit in and how to make things work. Those activities never hurt!
11. I have never had a target audience for my artwork, no. I consider myself the target, and if I enjoy it, I hope others will as well. That said, for the Sidney art show, I created a work one year that I thought the judges would like. It was based on the crow painting in the living room. It was rejected. I should have known better, work that’s created to an ideal of who one thinks one’s target audience is almost always fails — it’s too “safe” and people feel it. I also didn’t spend as much time on it as it deserved and so it was not well resolved. However, much as it’s painful, one should always seek criticism and not praise. I value that experience, haven’t yet created another work to enter in a competition, but am considering it. On a different note, at work, the “target audience” idea is a bit different. There, we have a very definite target audience (the Premier’s Office and our own executive), but to manage this we have created a rigidly defined appearance to the work we create (set colours, set typefaces, etc.). It is understood our work is going to use these components and look a certain way. This allows us to respond quickly to requests without having to go through the brainstorming process every time we take on a new job (see number 8). We have created a look that our executive likes during our down-time. This we use all the time and it helps when we’re under a deadline.
12. Competition is good, but it’s tough if you lose. However, it hones one’s skill and pushes one to better one’s self. Think of running the 100 meter dash — you want to practice hard so that you can beat that kid from Colquitz at the track meet, correct? Some time ago, at Tara’s request, I entered the local chapter of the Graphic Designers of Canada’s design competition and won the award for the best logo design. Some design firms make a point of entering as many competitions as possible so they can win awards, but I believe with graphic design that one is working on behalf of the client instead of oneself. Awards are — in that discipline — more self-serving than directly serving the client. The competition is in the marketplace. If your client’s poster (or whatever you designed for them) doesn’t get their audience’s attention, then you lost the competition.
13. Still working on accepting constructive criticism, this is an on-going process for me. On Monday, I had a nice colleague at work call to say the illustration I created for her was perhaps not quite what she had in mind. I knew at the time it wasn’t going to work for her because — after I sent the illustration to her by email — she didn’t respond right away to say, “I love it! This is great!” Usually when you don’t hear from someone, they’re thinking of a polite way to not hurt your feelings, and yet still tell you your work isn’t on the mark. I had to credit her for her very considerate approach. It made me think, “She’s right, suck it up.” It’s like competition, it hones one’s skill.

To your other questions, I’ll be a brief as I can.

1. Perhaps let’s think about drawing because — for me — I can paint but I always start with drawing, it’s my first love. I started drawing when I was a little kid. One of my earliest memories of creating a drawing that people loved was in Sunday School when I was probably 5 or 6. Mrs. Ruth Gordon was the Sunday School teacher and she thought it was great I drew sweat coming off of Jesus when he was in the desert for forty days. She kept the drawing. I also remember as a kid drawing company logos and trying to understand what they meant and how they were constructed. Letterforms as well. Uncle Jeff and I would for hours pour over a type specimen book we once got free from Letraset. Pretty geeky stuff, eh?
2. See question 10 above. Yes, art class was one of my favourites, by high school I was hooked. I have always loved science and probably would have loved math, too, but those teachers in high school were real assholes.
3. My Mom supported my artwork, she would colour our colouring books and her work was gorgeous. I think Mom always wanted to be an artist, but she became a nurse. Dad wanted me to become an accountant. That’s why I try and bite my tongue when you kids have dreams — studying art worked for me, studying music worked for Uncle Jeff — your dreams will probably work for you two, too!
4. I went to the University of Regina first, a year after I graduated from high school. Mom encouraged it because she had post-secondary. Dad didn’t and so didn’t see the value, but supported me all the same. I went to Emily Carr shortly after the computer defined itself as a tool for design. I figured I had better learn something about computer design. There wasn’t a design college in Saskatchewan, so I applied to NSCAD, OCAD, ACAD and ECUAD and was accepted by all but ACAD for some reason. Your Mom and I were dating at the time. She said she didn’t want to live in Toronto or Halifax, so we moved to Vancouver and I went to ECUAD, then called ECCAD.
5. UofR 1986, Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art with Distinction. ECUAD 1994, Diploma in Design.
6. I don’t know where to begin to describe my top artistic and design influences, so many figures have been kindred spirits: Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, Herge, Mobius, Saul Bass, Paul Klee, Robert Slimbach, Wassily Kandinsky, Bernie Fuchs, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Winsor McKay, Paul Rand, Herb Lubalin, Alex Colville, Adrian Frutiger, Jan Vermeer, Joe Fafard, Ted Godwin, Robert Davidson, Susan Point, Arthur Shilling, I respect all of these artists’ work. The list could go on and on...!
   

Hope this helps, Margo. Have fun!

0x0x0x
Dad