We’re making ugly stuff now!

Say it ain’t so! And in such a beautiful place?!

Waterfronts are becoming a recurring character in Creative Camp.

Day 14 of taking myself to Creative Camp and I’ve swapped the Vancouver riverwalk for the Chicago lakefront. My pretty city. I’m on a late summer staycay and that means Camp is mobile again! HQ = Here & Now.

Today’s prompt:

Collage.
Nature.
Slow.

Full moon, full circle moment.

Day 1 began on Ohio Street Beach and on Day 14 I’m back, camera in hand, ready to collage these moments on top of one other. Day 11 showed me I don’t always need to MAKE a composition – I’m already in it.

Staycay and slow go together like sand and surf. So I lean into the prompt and take it with me on our adventures.

I feel buoyant beneath the most brilliant blue sky on Chicago’s museum campus. (I hope I feel that same way in a few weeks when I do the Chicago Triathlon! Eeee!)

It’s free day at the Field Museum (Rule #1: Use what you have) and the camper in me is soaking up the creativity oozing out of every sight and sound. I don’t know if I’ve ever had so much fun at the Field Museum!

But THIS is what stops me in my tracks: all these exhibits about the ways humans have adapted to survive, to do and be better together. Creativity is at the center of it all.

Creativity isn’t simply about making ART for ornament or decoration or even ritual – it’s about an artful approach to life.

Today, we see creativity as a bonus, an extra, something saved for those with a special gift or calling, instead of a necessary part of survival that belongs to us all. So we hire life coaches. We “outsource certainty,” right Lisa? 😉

We buy things to solve our problems.

We hope someone or something – A bro
A book
A burger
A body

– will tell us what to do next or give us the quick fix. We are looking for the escape instead of PLOTTING the escape ourselves.

Ahhh! Rule #1: Use what you have is ALL AROUND US. Beckoning me back into the world of making 👏 shit 👏 happen 👏  with 👏  my 👏  own 👏  hands.

So that’s what I do at camp. I collage this ugly little junk journal page. I don’t plan to make it ugly but it just kinda happens and I can’t YES AND my way into anything prettier than this.

Not to be THAT girl who just went to a museum and thinks she’s in Yesteryear now, but I bet shit got ugly for those hunter gatherers…

What if creativity is ugly sometimes?

It’s not all pretty art on a wall. It’s solving for UGLY PROBLEMS.

And yeah, that shit is SLOW. It takes TIME to solve ugly problems.

Creativity is iterative. So is nature. (Damn, that prompt is working HARD today.)

But I can’t help but see the overlaps here as I collage these moments together – the ways that creativity is itself a collage of noticing, adapting, rearranging, using what you have. Over and over again. We collage our way to and through new worlds.

Creativity is more than making things beautiful. It’s how humans make our way forward.

And that’s how you make me ugly cry on a beautiful day.

Welcome to camp.