Have you ever walked into a place,
rubbed your hands together, and said to yourself, “I could really do some great
work here”?
Artists and musicians have studios,
craftsmen have workshops, professors and pastors have studies, and scientists
have laboratories. Sitting by the ocean
or looking out of the window of my office at the pine trees in my back yard
does this for me.
Where is your creative space? Where do you go to do your best work? One of my artist friends describes her studio
as her sanctuary. It is her “safe
place.” When she is in her studio, she
is able to create, try out new concepts, and leave her work in progress. Her
studio is filled with light; it’s clean and well organized and is just the
right temperature for her. It is her
retreat from the hectic, outside world, a place where she can immerse herself
in a private world of concepts and colors.
In his book, The Art and Science of Creativity, George Kneller described the
unusual devices some creative people adopted for their working environments.
Schiller loved the smell of apples, so he filled his desk with rotten ones;
Proust worked in a cork-lined room; Mozart composed after exercise; Frost would
write only at night. The extreme case
was the philosopher Kant, who would work in bed at certain times of the day
with the blankets arranged around him in a specific fashion. While writing The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant would concentrate on a tower
visible from his window. When some trees
grew up to hide the tower, he became frustrated, and the city fathers of
Konigsberg cut down the trees so that he could continue his work.
Now, we are not advocating that you
stock your desk with decaying fruit or cut down the trees in your neighborhood. But think about it for a minute: What are the qualities of your optimal
working/creating environment? Think
about it. Write about it. Draw it.
Then make it.
Remember, If you expect yourself to
do creative work, then you need a place to do it.
Roger Firestien and Laura Ryan
