joshua chamberlain

Category: art

  • notes taken during a creative failure in progress

    You get to the best parts of yourself on accident. Your job as an artist is to orchestrate those accidents. After all, it’s always better when your unconscious does the work.

  • an unstoppable force and an immovable object

    Debbie Millman knows how to conduct an interview. Ai Weiwei knows how to navigate interrogation. Their pairing on a recent episode of Design Matters made for a few golden moments: Millman: I was wondering if you have memories of the first time that you remember being creative. WeiWei: I never…

  • the doodle game

    I had a blast listening to Wendy MacNaughton’s Draw Together podcast this week. The second episode introduces “The Doodle Game,” an easy way to tap into creative flow. You begin by scribbling on a piece of paper, then adding features and details to what you see in the mess you’ve…

  • a poem or a prayer

    I’ve always loved how poetry comes from somewhere deep, almost as though it’s the language of the soul. Austin Kleon, in addition to being famous as the Steal Like an Artist guy, is known for his blackout poems. He takes newspaper clips and blacks out most of the words to…

  • let it be awful

    I’ve been playing around with paint recently. I’m not good at painting, but that’s the whole point. Allowing the work to be terrible to a joyful kind of letting go. Without the pressure of trying to meet anyone expectations (including my own), there’s a freedom to play, to wonder, to…

  • let your unconscious do the work

    I’ve been trying to take a page from Jennifer Egan’s book lately and allow my unconscious do the work. This means writing by hand, following characters where they want to go. I wrote a scene this morning I thought was going to end with a character forcing their way onstage…

  • somewhere to be terrible

    I’ve been dabbling with collages for a few years now. It helps me clear my head and express what I can’t with words. But somewhere down the line, I got stuck. The process of cutting and pasting became too important. I’d wind up crushing a finished collage under the weight…

  • gorging on forbidden fruit

    In this age of colossal cinematic crossovers (thing such as The Avengers or Godzilla vs. Kong), perhaps the one that beats all the others is Austin Kleon’s appearance on Andy J. Pizza’s Creative Pep Talk. In a conversation that ranges from setting creative rules for yourself to following your disgust,…

  • the art of inversion

    I had a conversation with some friends last night about inversion–the idea of taking something and flipping it on its head. Example: one of my college professors once gave a lecture on divorcing the signifier from the signified. He said the the class, “Green means…” and everyone replied “Go.” “Red…

  • don’t save a thing

    Being a human is about embracing contradiction. A while back, I wrote about saving everything. No matter who bad the work is going, it’s worth putting in a folder instead of dumping your garbage can. However, often when I’m writing, I’ll have an idea and think, “That’s good, I want…