Author Archives: dlhitzeman

What I’m into now

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My creative undertakings are coalescing into several projects that I have something to show in the near future:

First, I am revisiting an old project focused on small drawings using a variety of methods I can produce in a short amount of time and in quantity. These will be mostly non-representational creations focusing on geometry, shape, and color; although, some of them may be as representational as I get.

Second, I have revived my “ambiart” painting project that involves creating small, color-swatch paintings designed to be color accents.

Third, I am transitioning my 3d-drawing toward kinetic sculptures inspired, in part, by my recent discovery of Greg Olijnyk‘s work and revisiting some themes I once explored in other media, including cardboard, once upon a time. I envision these sculptures involving motion, motors, lights, and even sound.

Fourth, I have discovered both fabric painting and wet felting, and both these discoveries have lead to a new idea that is still very much in development at the moment that may also involve sculptural and technological elements. I hope to have something to show for this undertaking after the first of the year.

Finally, I am working toward getting my newest LEGO studio into some kind of working order so that I can pursue my latest passion in brick building: micro cityscapes. 

As always, I tend to be far more ambitious in my pursuits than time and stamina often permits. Nevertheless, I intend to give all of these projects a fair go, and I hope to have some examples to post here in the very near future. Stay tuned.

DLH

Creativity and the creator

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If you spend enough time around creative types, you’re bound to hear the same lament: I’m a creator! Why am I not creating?

I suffer from this lament to the extreme on occasion, and while I could launch into the laundry list of reasons, real and imagined, that I don’t create even when I want to be, I want to focus here on one:

We creatives often make creating way too complicated.

Again, there are all sorts of reasons for that, both real and imagined, but the simple fact is that the act of creation is often simply a matter of doing it without concern for the outcome. Unfortunately, we often get tangled up in worrying about the outcome way before the product even exists, and the result is that the creating never gets done.

It’s easy and cliche to just claim the answer is to go create. The fact is creative types live in their heads, and all of those real and imagined obstacles to creating are real for those experiencing them. The single biggest success that any creator can have is overcoming them.

I can’t say what will work for anyone else, but I can say for myself the way over/through/around that block is often clear cut: simplify. My projects often become unmanagibly grandiose, and by letting them become so, I often can’t wrap my brain around finishing them. When I simplify them, they tend to come out, and sometimes even approach the level of grandeur I imagined.

My task going forward, then, is to simplify the approach I’m taking to what I create so that I’m actually creating. It’s a tall order even then. Here’s to doing it.

DLH

Inspiration

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Fire it up!

I hate inspiration.

There, I said it.

Inspiration is an infuriating creature. It’s capricious. Fickle. Unpredictable. Unreliable. It rarely gets work done and is notorious for abandoning me right in the middle of something that needs done.

And it is indispensable to my creative process.

The fact is that every idea I’ve ever had, no matter what it is, is a child of inspiration. That relationship may be subtle, like a whisper carried on a breeze, or it may be unmistakable, like a lightning strike. Either way, inspiration births ideas and everything that comes from it.

Nevertheless, I hate it because I can’t control it. I want it to obey me and to produce on command. It laughs and disappears for days and months and years, only to return with no apparent prompting to dump a pile of ill-begotten offspring on me and disappear again.

So, it is a surprise when inspiration appears with the true intent of showing me a new thing, opening up a vista of possibility to me that had been heretofore obscured and impossible to get to.

This time, inspiration showed up in the form of an internet article about a dumpster fire toy. I know, right?

But that’s what it was. A spark that, pun intended, caught fire and burned away the dead wood that was obscuring my path to something I’ve been trying to find my way to for decades without success. Suddenly, there it is, the thing I’ve been looking for in all its glory.

A dumpster fire.

Yeah, inspiration. I hate it. And I love it.

Please don’t leave. Please come back.

DLH

There is no such thing as “good enough”

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One of the things more likely to break my heart than anything else is hearing someone say they don’t do something because they’re “not good enough”. I hear this more often about the arts than any other thing, but the sentiment applies to almost anything.

I’m here to tell you there is no such thing as, “good enough”. In fact, there is simply a continuum of skill between none developed yet and as much as one is ever likely to develop. Yes, some people have more natural talent that may put them further along this continuum than others or make it easier for them to develop, but talent undeveloped is no better than skill undeveloped.

The simple fact is that you should do something because you have it in your heart to try. No, I am no pandering to some kind of “pursue your dreams” mentality. Yes, the bills still need paid. Yes, our obligations still need met. Nevertheless, you should still try because it suits you.

I would argue that the only thing “not good enough” is not trying. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. It doesn’t matter how “good” anyone else is. If you love it and it completes you, do it.

That, my friend, is good enough.

DLH