The Soul of Creativity

“There is no force more powerful than that of an unbridled imagination.” Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

I had lunch with my friend Sheila last week and she reported feeling out of sorts. An ordained minister who started her own non-denominational church a year ago, she has the usual workload of preparing each week’s program, writing the bulletin, writing the sermon, providing pastoral care, conducting the Sunday morning service and all the other tasks, big and small, that preachers are (literally!) called to do. And yet, she has time on her hands. She said she finally realized that she needed to do something creative.

Her talents are so obvious that several years ago, I bought her a name plaque identifying her as Sheila Johnson, Artist. Sewing, painting, writing, doll making, and quilting are a few of her interests, but like most of us, she pushes them to the edges of her life, fitting them in around the “more important” things that fill her days.

Only when the need becomes overwhelming does she start a project. This time she turned to the canvas and made a tiny mixed media piece out of the parts of flowers. First, she rubbed in the yellow pollen from the center of a flower to create a sunny background. Minuscule blossoms became stars in the sky and a dried leaf turned into a bird. She coated the whole piece with acrylic to preserve it. Although she only spent about an hour on the project, it brought her a new, positive outlook and renewed energy.

I’ve heard similar stories from others and I could relate a few from my own life. We were all born creators, and our creative impulses will not go away if we ignore them. They will remain at the periphery of our consciousness nagging us until the day we die.

© Copyright 2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

An “Urban” Suburb

"The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out." Dee Hock

I had my Artist Date last Friday at the Museum of Outdoor Arts in Englewood, a suburb south of Denver. I’ll tell you more about the exhibit in a later post. Here I want to talk about the Englewood City Center, where the museum is located. Yet another example of the New Urbanism that attempts to create a mixed-use “vibrant downtown core” feeling in the middle of a sprawling beige suburb, it showed promise when I drove into a small park displaying sculptures and a fountain.

Maybe I should mention up front that I always feel like an illegal alien on the planet suburbia.

City Hall stood on one side of the park, across from a three-story building with offices, many of them still vacant, on the ground level and apartments above. The block leading down to the park is the same, with a few restaurants, a coffee shop and a bead shop among the law and insurance and architecture offices with apartments above. At the end of that block is a HUGE Wal-Mart store, looming like the mother ship.

I like the concept of putting housing, retail and office units together, but this seemed a little sterile to me. Of course it’s new and still half empty, so that will change, but here’s the thing: I wouldn’t want to live next door to a Wall-Mart. Those people who “camp” in RVs in Wal-Mart parking lots might disagree with me.

The whole time I was there, I saw a total of about a dozen people around, unlike the neighborhood business districts near me, which these new downtowns are trying to emulate and which always seem to be crammed with people drinking coffee, talking on their phones, pushing strollers and walking their dogs.

I’m not sure what the problem was. Maybe it will just take time for the place to develop some character and personality. Or maybe they need more variety of housing—single family houses, town homes and lofts in addition to the cookie-cutter apartments. Or maybe downtowns only work, well, downtown. I know I was happy to get back home to my little urban village of North Denver.

© Copyright 2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved