Making

What does a banana peel have to do with design, or even Making for that matter. Well, as you’ll read in this JOURNAL: TALKING DESIGN it has everything to do with it, because when Making its not so much what you have but what you envision with what you have.

Essentially, the mind is sight, tool and impetus. And these confect into an amazing process. Consider the following from Edward O. Wilson, biologist and naturalist, “What, then, is creativity? It is the innate quest for originality. . . . the discovery of new entities and processes, the solving of old challenges and the disclosure of new ones, the aesthetic surprise of unanticipated facts and theories . . . “ Pretty heady stuff. You see creativity is not simply being creative, a Sunday painter, the hobbiest it is the search to a question and the hope of finding an answer. Wilson continues, “We judge creativity by the magnitude of the emotional response it evokes.” * It might be said, the Maker and the viewer are connected by their souls when the former completes and the latter receives.

The act of Making is as much of the soul (expressive spirit), mind (conceptual and theoretical) as it is physical (hand and body). Creativity is not simply the act of the hands, as often thought. Honing Creativity to (re)define it as Making. Making is a confection of soul, mind and body - the mind holding the seed of an idea, the soul imparting life, and the body germinating the seed to the physical world of our SpaceTime. Without the body, Making the idea never leaves the mind. Without the soul the work never has vitality. Idea then, is stymied in a mental vortex, and mixed with the mundane, it swirls, ultimately lost to the chug and churn of daily life. The act of Making must be choreographed between the soul, mind and corporeal body; as a dance, to be ordered, to be formed. Making is more than creativity because it demands discipline, vision, perseverance, dedication and determination. It has to be bilingual, intimate, difficult, personal, challenging, and ultimately in something tangible and extrasensory, ephemeral and timeless.

Making, then, can be the mark on paper, the written word, brush to canvass, the dance across the stage, the structure, the installation. The list goes on infinitum. In this context Making is both formal and informal. That is to say, the quick sketch (the term sketch is both encompassing and unique to each artist) and should be as important to the Maker as the finished work. And, it might be argued, the informal is of greater importance. As such, the formal then, becomes simply a sliver of the original concept; the idea being far superior. For idea is a spark, a spontaneous confection, like the merging of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom forming water.

Finished work is comprised of three qualities, the formal, the literate and the articulate. These present themselves in well designed and meaningful work as well as exhibit depth and substance. These reference well thought and well developed pre-work, the culmination of the afore mentioned steps. Gone are experimentation and investigation. The work is able to stand, be recognized, understood, speak, challenge, etc. It carries on a discourse with viewer, space and time. Formal, then, stages literacy and articulation. Literacy is, quite literally, proficiency, intelligence and these naturally compliment articulation. These factors our essential and demonstrate the soul, mind and hand of the Maker. That is to say, literacy, like a mirror, reflects the the Maker. Articulation displays eloquence, clarity, coherence, expressiveness. It is linked to Refinement and also speaks to Finished, in that these characteristics amplify, deepen and enhance its twin-sister, literacy. Finished, it can not survive without either literacy and articulation. They are, in essence, two sides of the same coin. And, together bolster their parent, Formal. In all cases these qualities, as artistic expressions, are the extension of, and the embodiment of the Maker.

Making is as much complex as it is fluid and evolving. Making is unto itself. The total creative act, it is both fearless and objective. To be a Maker takes audacity, the totality of the Maker; soul, mind and body. None live apart from the other.

And while this is existential and philosophical it is all quite grounded in process and methodology. It is scientific and it is rigorous. In the end it is Design; thing, product, process, thinking.

*The Origins of Creativity, Liverlight Publishing Corporation. A Division of W. M. Norton & Company, Independent Publishers Since 1923. New York • London. https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Creativity-Edward-Wilson/dp/1631493183