Pathscrossing News

Launching The Art of Illumination

One of my dream ideas is launching today! Today!

For maybe the past three years, whenever I sat down to write what my heart really wanted, I found myself writing about a place where adults come to play, using theater, visual art, storytelling, and movement to impact a personal or professional challenge or opportunity. The result of that dream writing now has a name, it is called The Art of Illumination.

art and business interviews: launching WorkPlay

I have been blurring my roles as a visual artist, writer, performer and speaker, consultant, advisor, and coach, exploring the application of arts-based processes to business. Over the years, I have developed what my friend, David Barry, calls “the art mind.” It is a way of thinking -- not just only looking at what is at face value, but also taking unexpected and curious detours, paths that an artist has learned to trust, knowing that each step is part of an unfolding process. It is an approach that delivers results that often exceed initial expectations.

Explore my interviews with leaders, teachers of the arts, writers, performers, musicians, movement artists, and visual artists. Each, in their own way share their story about how the arts benefit their day jobs in non-profits, government, and the private sector.

I believe that the business environment is always looking for individuals who are willing to take risks to create new value propositions, to see beyond the status quo, to tap into the powers of their imagination, to apply their discovery processes to situations that are seeking something more.

In Spring 2008, I am launching WorkPlay: The Art of Illumination, a 5 part event for individuals and teams to play with storytelling, visual arts, zen calligraphy, movement, and ensemble with respect to a real business or personal challenge - learning to trust their own creative impulses. WorkPlay is not about becoming an artist, it’s more about exploring ways to appreciate both the process and the outcome. For more information, subscribe to my newsletter or send me your email address to receive announcements about my upcoming events.

creative spaces

Where are you most creative? Creative in the sense that you have this energy to wander, explore and be curious. Creative in that you feel open and vulnerable, not knowing for sure what will happen, but trusting enough to know that something will. Creative so that you feel the thrill of life, the joy of being alive, and the exhilaration of waiting to find out what you will make.

Traditionally, there are the types of creative spaces that we are used to thinking about as studios. Where artists and craftsman are in their zone, focused and unwavering in their attention with every movement of a paintbrush, a chisel, or a carving tool.

There are also the creative spaces of writers, poets, and playwrights. I've only seen them in the movies. There is an antiqued desk, late 1800s, polished mahoghany with a drawer in the front. Atop the desk are only a lamp, paper, a vase with flowers, and pens. Usually the desk is positioned in front of a window overlooking some large field, providing a field of expansiveness to let the mind wander.

There are also the creative spaces of dancers and actors, the stages and rehearsal rooms cluttered with props and chairs along the sides. The hollowness of the theater or the reflections of mirrors grants the performer their imagination as they walk through, move through, or talk through their character.

For the student of history, or accounting, or law, or biology, there creative space can be the architecture of the library or the beauty of the campus grounds. It could even be the chaos and calamity of the student union building or a dorm, if noise is your muse.

And, business, where are the creative spaces? Where are the places where individuals can tap in to their creative energies? If you go from meeting rooms to work areas, you wonder where people get their energy and inspiration to find breakthrough ideas. I'm sure that for some, there isn't too much of a need to have a creative space.

For those who know that a creative space adds to their contribution, what does that look like? What are the colors in that space? What are the dimensions? Do you need music or just quiet? Windows? Books? Paintings? Posters? What types of paper do you need to have around you? Markers? Pens? Post-its? Even toys, things that you can roll around while you're thinking, or things that you can assemble or squeeze?

Even though we know that businesses don't offer the creative spaces that we want, think about ways to make your own creative space when you need it. See what happens to your discussions. To the naysayers, tell them you'll keep the "toys" in your part of the meeting. On the other hand, you never know, you might start a trend.

painting and speaking - learning to let go

Sometimes, it takes a bit to get in to the zone, as a painter. I first noticed it when I took the “Creativity of Non-Doing” workshop. This two-day workshop was based on the eastern art of calligraphic painting. As I painted on the first day, I often found myself lifting the brush, dipping it in the ink, and as I moved it over the white rice paper, I could hear this conversation inside my head. I heard voices talking about what it should look like. I even heard separate voices about where the first stroke should begin. One voice said to begin in one area, while another said to begin in another area. The more I heard these voices, the more that I realized that I wasn’t completely trusting myself, to just let it go, allowing my brush to speak, rather than to be commanded.

This behavior is very familiar. I notice it often when I am sitting in a meeting. I heard these voices inside of my head about what to say. Then, finally, I say something. While it could be said that it is important to consider one’s contribution, the other side is this: that when I am busy trying to figure out what to say, I am missing another part of the conversation in the sense that I am not fully listening. I do not mean to suggest that everyone should heed their impulse to speak.

Let’s go back to my experience in the calligraphic painting workshop. While I am listening to the voices inside of my head deciding when to begin painting and where to place the first brush stroke, I am painting from the head. What’s wrong with that? I wouldn’t have known that difference until I found a different place to paint from within on the second day of the workshop.

It was my very last painting on the second day. I had done a brief meditation right before the painting, as we had on earlier occasions. Except this time, I did a meditation on “letting go.” This time, the brush choose itself, and as I moved it over the paper, the brush found it’s first stroke, followed by just a few more. When it was done, I was quite surprised.

The first brush stroke went from left to right within the center of the sheet. It was a bold stroke of gray ink (watered down black ink) going slightly in a diagonal direction. The second stroke begin somewhere towards the end and slightly below that stroke. It was a much bolder stroke in black also traveling towards the upper left hand corner.

Standing back from the painting what I interpreted was that when you let go (the first stroke), something else shows up (the second stroke) to support you. I had found that moment, of letting the brush speak for me, rather than to let the wrestling voices from within my mind. By letting the brush speak, I discovered something that I had not experienced on any earlier painting – the brush can have a voice of its own, speaking from a place away from my mind. I don’t know where that place is. I only know that by finding it, I also found the representation of an idea that was my teacher for that moment – to let go is to also find what supports you.

So, now I wonder about this other voice from which to speak when I am sitting in a business meeting. Do I need to know exactly what I am going to say before I say it? Or, can I trust myself enough to let go so that a voice from that other place can be expressed? Who knows, it may even be that one idea that could make the difference in what is pursued or considered.

reality art

Today, I am leading an area in a Fortune 100 company in the area of leadership development, learning and technology. I began leading this area only recently. Through it, I have the opportunity to practice some of the principles that I have as an artist.

Foremost in my thinking is how to define a strategic opportunity with tactics and a schedule that have just enough detail so that senior leaders and staff know what lies ahead. Defining the opportunity has been like my canvas and my easel, the framework upon which the work will be created. Now, I am being thoughtful about the composition of the team in the way that I choose brushes, each brush having a specific capability based on it’s composition to work with certain types of paints and to provide specific types of textures and effects on the canvas. Between the canvas and the brushes are the media. For me, the media are represented by the experience and wisdom of key individuals who provide the integral concepts for the team to work with.

Like any painting that I have created, there is this time when you are preparing to paint, when I the energy to paint begins to engage me like sonar waves, looking around me and interpreting it internally. Using a presentation or a paper or even a blank sheet of paper with some notes, I share with others around me and interpreting their reactions. Then, finally with the idea in mind, I become ready to step up to the canvas. This time, however, I also need to have the brushes and the medium ready to go, too. So, as that time approaches, I am talking with experienced advisors both inside and outside the Company (the medium of concepts) and networking to secure the team (the brushes).

This feels like a collective art experience. Instead of just me and the canvas with my brushes and paints, it’s a much bigger canvas (the strategic opportunity), one that can be experienced by an entire company of over 150,000. Instead of just my brushes, each individual brush (a team member) has an even wider range to create textures and shapes. And, instead of just the paints that I choose, they are the paints (leading ideas and concepts) that have been tried within industry.

Today’s business environment has more unknowns. It is a world that asks us to navigate as artists, in ways familiar and unfamiliar. Personally, even though I don’t have as much time to stand in front of my canvas, I know that for now, I am still an artist.