Self-Expression
“There is vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.”
Martha Graham, Choreographer
Slivers of Eternity: One Minute Meditations on the Ground of Creativity, #6
The creative universe that has given rise to the world as we know it is dynamic, interdependent, and deeply mysterious. In this series of one minute videos, I invite you to slow down and return for a moment to the Ground of Creativity, the Ground of Creativity that supports the world we experience, the Ground […]
Creativity and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Part V: How Creativity Expands Our Sense of Self
We began this series by looking at Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, noting how Maslow has creativity positioned at the uppermost level, at the level of Self-Actualization. We also noted that while the first four levels were characterized by a sense of “deficiency” or lack, this uppermost level of Self-Actualization was marked by a sense […]
Create to Honor Impermanence
Some time ago, I was designing a gabled roof to cover a client’s porch. I was stumped trying to solve a detail involving the intersection of a vertical post, a horizontal beam, and a frame for a bug screen. I remembered a solution I liked from a project I’d worked on a few years earlier […]
The Heart of Creative Design: On Natural Light
Nourishing, life-giving, ever-changing light, rising and setting, arching across the sky, silvering the waxen edges of the leaves of the oak tree, flashing up the spine of a single blade of grass, its resplendent presence on the sill of a window, its ability to penetrate a room like a sharp object or to diffuse through […]
Creativity and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, part IV: Creativity and Culture
Last time we explored personal traumas and their effects, both positive and negative, on our ability to create. Now let’s take a wider view, this time exploring the reigning attitude of a culture and how it can either thwart or enhance the creative process. Remember, since the finite ego perceives itself as separate from the […]