Creative Process

What I learned about the creative process...

Throughout this project, I became more aware of how nonlinear my creative process actually is. While working with plaster casts and image transfer, I initially approached the work with a fixed outcome in mind, but quickly found that the material resisted control—cracking, absorbing images unevenly, or distorting transferred surfaces. This made me think about the conversations we had in Scholars about the creative process, specifically Wallas's model of creatitivity. Specifically, I looked at the "incubation" stage, which suggests that problems need to be set aside in order to let the unconscious work on the issue. 

The idea of "killing your darlings" and prototyping was also a significant part of my creative process. During the first semester of my sophomore year, I had planned on completely a life-size ceramic sculpture to express this idea of anticipatory grief. Unfortunately, this idea turned out to be impractical and too expensive, so I had to "kill" it off in favor of something more achievable. Because I wasn't familiar with casting beforehand, prototyping and practicing the process before applying it to someone's face was extremely important. Here, you see a cast of my hand that I did as practice.