DO/DONOTTHINK/DO

PORTRAIT OF SELF

Workshop Menu: Directions for Getting Hungry

1. Commit yourself to the problem; Trust in the situation; don't Commit yourself to the problem; Trust in the situation; don’t prejudge.
2. Don’t be judgmental.
3. Learn to make decisions without rational thought.
4. Trust your body.
5. Nothing is a mistake, all is an experiment.
6. Work leads; it is the people who make that eventually discover.
7. Don’t create and analyze just make, they are significantly different processes.
8. Enjoy your self; Play with a child’s intensity.
9. Be self-regulating and disciplined; discover your habits and break them.
10. Beware! Observation is prejudice; it is a form of pre-thinking.

Don’t be afraid of being dumb.

Skip skip skip skip or read read read

Visual Literacy, Creative Thinking Menu; A Short List of Possibilities

1. Multiple Perspectives: It is important to recognize that we see the world through our own narrow experiences, habits and memories. Seeing is judgmental. Learning to step out of our own eyes and see the world through the eyes and considerations of others stimulates creativity. To think more creatively we need to see the world from multiple perspectives.
   
2. Reading Cultural Inscription: Much of what we learn to say and do is determined by pressure: political, social, peer, commercial and economic. We swim in a sea of culture whose currents affect how we act. These outside forces help to make up our identity. Often we are like the ventriloquist's dummy, manipulated to act as scripted by others. Learning to read our culture and seeing how it defines us is an important step in overcoming domination and learning to speak our own minds.
   
3. Brainstorming: Brainstorming is creative play. It is a process of possibility not conclusion. In school we learn to find a single answer to a question. Brainstorming is learning to capture all ideas no matter how unattached to the problem they seem. All ideas are opportunities. Brainstorming is the separation of analysis from possibility.
   
4. Stimulation, collection, research: Creative thinking is stimulated by reacting to data and information. It is seldom successful to try and simply think something up. Through collection and research the mind and memory are stimulated.
   
5. Diverse lines of investigation: All questions and problems open new lines of investigation. Learn to search for, find and record these new possibilities.
   
6. Deduction: Sherlock Holmes uses his powers of deductive reasoning to solve fictional crimes. He fills the gaps between clues by reading the hidden story. Deduction is the ability to look at objects and imagine their history based on visual clues. Deduction is informed imagination.
   
7. Collaboration: Most of our work in school is evaluated on individual achievement. To collaborate you must learn to be open, sharing, and stimulate others imagination.
   
8. Imagination: Learn to suspend belief and beliefs. A child's imagination is a stream of ideas and images disregarding rationality. Children learn to play, adults learn to solve problems. Learning to combine the imaginative play of the child and the problem-solving qualities of the adult is hard work.
   
9. Reversal: Reverse your ideas. Ask what you would not do? Open the field of discarded possibilities.
   
10. Language: Language can be a barrier to creativity. Learn to rephrase and restate questions.
    This is where you begin do these question in any order only do the ones that interest you.

Make up your own questions.

Workbook Questions
How we see the world and the people in it is determined by our memory. Seeing is an act of remembering. We see the world through our experiences and prejudices. The following work is meant to break down the habitual way we look at our world, and ourselves and to provide a fresh start.

Perception is communication between the environment and the mind. Is art the record of the individual processing this communication?

Create a map of your first neighborhood. Mark on the map all the places that you were bad.
What processes mark the growth of the brain into the mind? Observation into memory? What is the shape and form of memory and thought? How does memory function? How does creative thought occur?

Habit has authority over thinking. Reverse your ideas. What would you not do to a piece of paper? How would you not make a drawing? How would you not express yourself? How would you not make a self-portrait? Make them.

Write about the first time that you hated another person. Use a pencil, erase your writing, place the writing in an envelope and seal the envelope. Write the word hate on it. Make a list of all the children who were your friends. Circle the one that became your first enemy. Do a portrait of him or her. Write the story about this person and you on the drawing. Change the word hate to love.
Some of our qualities will not change or will only slowly evolve over a lifetime, such as race, age, physical needs, biological makeup, and religion. What symbols represent these qualities for you? Collect the symbols that represent you. Create a symbolic self-portrait by making a collage out of the symbols.

Memory is a definition of self. It distorts the process of thinking and seeing. To think and see the world uniquely takes no active effort beyond existence. To express that unique view takes method.

Save the covers of all your notebooks and binders. Do they have drawings on them?

Save all the notes you receive and get back the ones you wrote. Make a special container to hold them. Place them in the container. Are other people allowed to open the container and read the notes? Will this change the way you design your container?

Save all the doodles that you make. Doodles are drawings. Place them in a large brown envelope.
Remember your first house? Go there in your imagination. Walk around in it, draw/write/record your memory on a sheet of paper, keeping your eyes closed. Do a second drawing with your eyes open. Write the story of your life in this house on the drawing. Use this as the source for a new creative work.

Some of our qualities are in constant change; such as physical appearance, friends, age, status, lifestyle, location, values, marital status, pregnancy, education, employment, and income. Make a portrait of your self in constant change.

How will time and life change you? Who will you be when you are 60 years old. Will you live in North Carolina in a trailer park? Write a poem about being old and looking back. Make a portrait of yourself as an old person. Combine the drawing and verses from the poem.

Trust your body. The hand is intelligent. Drawing is the dance of the hand. Make a drawing while you are dancing. Place a sheet of paper on the floor, turn up the music, dance on the paper, save it. It is a document of how you move.

Create yourself as a person with no heritage, no race, no gender, no age, no religion, no sexual orientation, no education, no occupation, and no family. Are you happy now? Are you a cartoon character? A super hero? Are you reduced to only your biology? List all the things you love, all the things you hate. Keep the list going. Which list is the longest? Make a drawing that is a war between the two lists.

Make a drawing about your family, in three ways: draw as you drew when you were 5 years old; as when you were 12 years old; as you might draw when you are 30 years old.

Make a drawing with the qualities that make you part of a group, gang, team, family, nationality, or race. Use symbols. Where does the self begin to become lost? Where is the line between you as a person and you as a member of the group? Make a drawing of your face and divide it into two sections, making one side you as an individual and one as part of the group.

Get a friend to trace the outline of your body on a large sheet of paper two times. One tracing represents your nationality and ethnic heritage, the other your personal life. Fill in the interior of the tracings with information that represents each category. Do the tracings overlap? What does it mean if they do?

Play creates wonder, or have you forgotten? Learn to play again. Make a work that makes fun of your most serious thoughts.

Turn your life into a board game, draw the board and create the characters. Can you win or lose the game? Are there rules? When does the game end? What do you win? What is the greatest hazard?

Art is play, art is serious, art is play, art is serious, art is play, art is serious. You are play and you are serious. Do a self-portrait showing both qualities.

When was the first time you understood ownership? When was the first time you realized you could not get something because of money, gender, status, race, body size, looks, lifestyle? Make a history of your life based on not getting what you wanted.

Keep a list of all the things you want to buy. Keep adding to it, scratching out the ones you buy or receive.

Make a list of every item you use in a day.

Habits determine how new ideas are received. We constantly reinforce our old habits. New information is always received in terms of old ways of seeing. To be creative we must see the world with new eyes. Photograph yourself as soon as you wake up everyday for a week.

What is the earliest piece of clothing that you remember wearing? Make that piece of clothing out of paper and paint. Write a verse describing the room in which you would have worn that garment. Make a list of all the clothes you remember having as a child, and keep adding to the list throughout this project.

Create a maze to protect your best friend from harm. What hides in the maze?

Create a maze to protect your best friend from harm. What hides in the maze?

Linear thinking leads to a single conclusion and possibility is lost. The rational system leads to continuity, selection, focus, but at the cost of seeing other possibilities.

Collect ephemera from your past: toys, church programs, movie tickets, clothes, hair, combs, other insignificant objects. Make them important by treating them as a treasure, they quantify your existence. Add them to your archives as photocopies.

We see what memory selects for us. Seeing is individualized by each person’s past experience.

Collect all the writings, drawings, objects, lists, ephemera, and place them together in a view box. Think about what should and should not be seen. Arrange the items according to their public and private values.

Work as a collaborative group to create an installation by photocopying documents from your archive. As a group use the photocopies to produce an exhibition/installation. Invite lots of people from your community. How can they participate and add to the exhibition?

These questions are a process to help you investigate your life. To break your habits of seeing and perceiving. Now it is time for you to make up your own questions and use the creative methods you have learned to go forward in continuing to record your life’s journey. Good luck.