Jump the Walls & Run

Lookbook is the new social networking site for folks to share their sense of fashion. I admit that I was blown away when I first checked it out. Most of the people are beautiful enough to be models (many ARE professional models), the photographs are class, and most of all, the threads are consistently rad.

In addition, it was startling to see people’s comments following the “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all” saying.  I was expecting I might see a few snobby sorts posting “OMG! Kill yourself or burn that dress…“ , but I didn’t see even one!

All I saw were “Loveeee love love it!” and “You’re the most adorable thing!“, and the like. I suppose friendly fashion has arrived.

On a more personal note, I was inspired to see such a wealth of creativity.  A huge number of the folks on Lookbook are also artists, musicians, stockists…, and will often have links to check out their sites or blogs. Does the site provoke vanity? Yes, and sometimes it’s taken to extremes, but I think that factor pales in comparison to the friendliness of community and creativity that exists on the site. Glad to have found it.

One of my main goals as an artist is to add beauty to the world. Sometimes it’s in the form of something that’s been thought-out for a long time and then created with great effort, while other times it’s done in a pretty random fashion.

Below is a Mexican Sprite bottle that I decorated with a mosaic of aluminum pieces cut from cans last summer.  Just thought it would be fun to share.

As far as I know, there is only 1 regret I managed to generate during my college years at Arizona State University- I would have liked to have seen more guest lectures.

The university managed to book amazing humanitarians, artists, and scientists to stop in for a bit and speak with students, but I always felt I had too much work to be able to take a break. Cool enough, a friend told me about a crew called TED (Technology Entertainment & Design) that hosts talks done by creative folks and then posts them online each week.  I’ve been enjoying them and catching up.

Here’s a few of my favorites so far:

Do Schools Kill Creativity? - Funny and brilliant talk by Sir Ken Robinson

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Below is a hyperlink to an article I came across called “The Creative Personality” in Psychology Today that was written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychology professor at the Claremont Graduate University who has spent 30 years studying creative individuals.

Three of my favorite creative peoples: (From left) Thomas Edison, Jim Henson, and Ben Franklin; creativity doesn't always look like a tortured poet or an androgynous rock-star.

Why read the article? The article covers ten “antithetical” (directly opposed or contrasted) traits that Csikszentmihalyi found to be in most all of the successful, working artists and creative types he studied over the years and I think it offers…

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