Life Kit - Want To Get Creative? Easy Art Projects For Quarantine

Episode Date: May 7, 2020

Looking for a creative outlet? Sarah Urist Green, author of Your Are An Artist, shares ideas for art projects you can do while at home during the coronavirus outbreak. No creative inspiration required.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Please help us out by completing a short anonymous survey at npr.org slash podcast survey. One word. It takes less than 10 minutes and really helps support the show. That's npr.org slash podcast survey. Hey, from the East Side, this is Christine Price. That's npr.'m Andrew Limbaugh and this is NPR's Life Kit. There's no getting around the fact that the world is crazy right now. There's obviously this pandemic and all the news associated with it. You're stuck at home. Every bit of content is telling you how to eat right and exercise better and be more productive. Well, let's be real. All you really want to do is go outside, hug your

family, share a meal with some friends, maybe actually touch and try out something you've been meaning to buy. Well, we can't help you with those things. But have you tried making some art? Okay, obviously, it's not a great substitute for those things. But art can help you filter through the noise and find out what's really important to you. For me, making art with my kids on my own has been a little something I can do that just sort of gets myself out of my own head a little bit. But it's also a way to like use your hands. It's a way of just sort of doing something a little bit meditative. It's like a puzzle, but plus with some thought behind it. So in this episode of Life Kit, let's make some art.

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Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Sarah Ureskreen is the host and creator of PBS's The Art Assignment and the author of the new book You Are an Artist, where she spoke to a bunch of different artists about what they do and their creative process and came up with these things called art assignments. And it could be something that is like a warm-up exercise for them or something that they normally do as a part of their practice, or it could be something just far afield that they thought would be fun to put out there. They really designed these assignments with other people in mind.

I asked them to come up with a prompt that didn't require expensive or very specific art materials and that could be done by somebody who either does or does not consider themselves to be an artist. Why bother doing art at all? I know that seems like a rudimentary question, a very basic one to one sort of thing. But like, what can I get out of this? I'm being very selfish. Like, what can I get out of this right now? Well, right now, I think that it's a great way to get unstuck. I know that a lot of people in my life are feeling very much sort of confused and a little bit. People have been making art since they've been people. It's a natural human impulse.

And I think that we've sort of gotten it in our heads that making art is this thing that only certain people can do. And so like in a wider holistic sense, I think that a lot of people think that they can't make art when they really can. And all they need is just sort of a little bit of a prompt and encouragement, some direction. Tell me about Shadow Portrait. Shadow Portrait is an assignment offered by the artist Lonnie Hawley, who's actually an artist that I took a workshop with when I was a child in Birmingham, Alabama. One of the first types of work he ever made was taking old wire and bending it into different shapes. And this

has been something that he's done throughout his career. And for his assignment, shadow portrait, he asks you to take a wire coat hanger or find one and then twist the hanger from the hook until you separate the two ends and straighten it out. And then you bend the wire into a profile of your face. And then if you like, you can add beads, cloth, feathers, or any other item that helps make it feel more like you. And then after you've done that, you can hang the piece up on the wall or hold it a few inches from a wall and take a picture of it and its shadow. And it can be, as he put it, it can be a reminder of the person you envisioned when you made it. So this is something that I've definitely tried out. And my little wire self-portrait hangs on my office wall. And does it look like me? No. But, you know, it's sort of,

it reminds me of me and that I made it. What I'm really trying to do is get people to start making things. And I think, you know, hewing too closely to any instruction is not the intent. And it might be a way to just like use stuff that might be rattling around in your closet, right? That you haven't seen in forever. Right, exactly. Even if you think you don't have art supplies floating around your house, I guarantee you do. All right, let's move on to the next one. Can you tell me a little bit about fake flyer?

Yeah, sure. So this assignment is offered by the artist Nathaniel Russell, and he asks you to make a flyer that gives advice, shares something about your life, or promotes an imagined event. And then the next step is to put it out into the world in some way, whether it's sort of tacking it up during your daily walk on a telephone pole or what have you, or to share it on social media or to circulate it to your friends. And this is something that he's kind of played with throughout his career. And he has done this series of fake flyers. And the one that we reproduced in the book is my favorite.

And he sort of found a picture online of a fancy French poodle. And then he sort of put it on an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper and then took a Sharpie and wrote above it in the style of a lost dog flyer. He wrote at the top the opposite of lost. Don't try to find me. I have finally escaped my master's wicked clutches. To the others, I say, join me. Bite the hand that feeds you, vive la liberté, Pierre. So I, you know, yes. Hell yeah. Yeah. It's, it's playful, but it's also punk, you know, it's, it's like finding this voice and this space to come up with an idea and to work within a platform that already exists. Take a familiar format and then twist it a little bit. Like what would a band poster or flyer look like in the age of coronavirus? Not that that's a great idea. It's not. But like part of it is just kind of sitting down with a bunch of basic materials and playing.

Like when I've done this one, even if I don't have any idea, I'll like go through a magazine and cut out a strange or interesting picture I find and then riff on that idea. So and and when I've done this, also, I've made a bunch of them. Because a lot of times if you're like, okay, I'm just gonna make one flyer. And it you know, you put you put too much into that one flyer. So if you say like, okay, I'm gonna make 10. And then and then maybe one of them is decent. Yeah. Okay, yeah. So you don't even need like, I don't, as someone who doesn't like have a printer. Yeah. You don't need a printer. You can take regular paper and like staples,

staples on magazines and stuff or whatever on it and like go to town, right? Yeah, or you can actually do this digitally too. You can find an image online. You can make it on your phone. You can make an Instagram post. So I think there's lots of ways that you can sort of interpret it within your own means. Yeah. I think this one hues sort of on the opposite end of the spectrum as shadow portrait, in that where shadow portrait,

you're sort of like being conscious about like using up all like your your junk and trash or whatever. This one seems focused solely on like impracticality. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, but what's impractical? I think we tend to underestimate how important play and impracticality are in our in our lives. You know, I think we're all listening to a lot of news, too much news in my case. And, you know, the ability to kind of get outside of that space and experiment and play and use what you've got around you is like more beneficial than we might realize. The next one I want to talk about is lost objects. Can you give us a quick overview? Sure. So lost childhood object is an assignment devised by the Pittsburgh-based artist Lenka Clayton.

And it is, the first step is to interview someone about an object they owned and cherished as a child. You ask questions to understand its dimensions, material, texture, and form. And the goal is to create a mental picture of that object. And then step two is to recreate the object as closely as you can using materials you have on hand. And step three is to give the object to the person. But something that you could do with someone with whom you share physical space or virtually anytime. You describe something you loved and lost as a child to me, and I'll do the same for you. And then using whatever you've got around the house, you know, maybe you're making a teddy bear out of old plastic, plastic bags from the

grocery store. And then and then you make it for each other. And again, like the goal isn't perfection here, but it's to sort of create a gift to give another person. And to me, that's a great, it's a great motivator for making something. Like for me, if I know that I'm going to give it to somebody, it's like an extra, it's like an extra kick. Because if it's just like, oh, I'm just doing this for my own benefit, it just seems pointless. I want to do something for someone. Yeah. So and this really has that in mind because they're counting on you. You know, they describe this thing and now it's in your court to realize it for them.

One question I have when I was like thinking about making these, and it's something I kind of struggle with when making art. A, how do you know when you're done? And B, how do you know if it's good? Oh, gosh. You know, I usually know I'm done when I can't work on it anymore, because I have something else to do. So I think that, like, is it that important to call it done? I mean, I think if you know it's done, it's done. But if you're not sure, then you just put it to the side, walk away, like pin it up on your wall or a board and look at it.

And over time, if you want to change it, you can change it or come back to it. I think that to a certain extent, it can remain open-ended. And to your question about how do you know if it's any good, I think that, again, if you free yourself from the thought that it has to be perfectly wonderful and, you know, extremely impressive, to me, I don't really care if what I've made is good or not. Because for me, my favorite things have stories behind them. You know, they're not just sort of like physically beautiful objects that I don't know anything about. But my favorite things have a history. They have a context. And I think if you can internalize that, you can get over this expectation that you need to be a masterful genius in order to make anything. When do you recommend people do these projects? Like, are you the type of person that like,

get like, gets up every day and does it first thing in the morning? Or do you just like, wait until inspiration strikes you? You know, art artists do not necessarily separate art from their life. Like I do think that it can be helpful to give yourself a deadline or but then it's up to you. I mean, I find that some mornings I wake up and I feel creative and I want to do something. But more often I wake up and I don't feel creative, but I do something anyway. And often once you sort of get started, you find your motivation in that process. You know, maybe you wait until your kids are in bed and say, OK, I'm going to have a glass of wine and try this exercise. I'm going to try to make a fake flyer for 45 minutes while I'm, you know, watching YouTube and doing something else too. You know, I think that's a good practical way

to start. And then just say, I'm going to try it for this amount of time. And if I like it, great. And if I don't, you know, it was 45 minutes and tomorrow I can try another thing. Yeah. And I do think it does seem important to just do it, even if you're not feeling like, quote unquote, inspired, whatever that means. Right. Because, you know, momentum will take you there eventually. Oh, yeah. Almost all of the artists or makers I know do not wait for inspiration to strike to make work. I think that there's a reason why they call it a practice. You know, it's something that you do. It's you sit down and you try. Maybe the output is great and maybe it's not. But if you keep at it enough, something good will come. So there you have it. We hope we've inspired you. To recap, making art is a

great way to get out of your own head and see the world in a new way. You don't have to make a masterpiece or be a quote-unquote creative to enjoy art. You just have to start making it. For more NPR Life Kit, check out our other episodes. I hosted one on how to appreciate poetry. My Arts Desk colleague, Petra Mayer, just put out an episode on how to write a novel. And we've got lots more. You can find those at npr.org slash life kit. And if you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash LifeKit newsletter. Also, we want to hear your tips. What are you doing to cope right now? Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 or email us at lifekit at npr.org. Special thanks to Sarah Urist-Green. This episode was produced by Andy Tegel. Megan Cain is the managing producer and Beth Donovan is our senior editor. And keeping up with all the latest coronavirus research, it's a lot. So on Shortwave, we translate the science you need to know into short daily episodes.

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