Dear Internet, I took myself to Creative Camp and here’s what I made so far.

Welcome to Creative Camp!

The experiment: 30 days of creative adventures to help me rebuild my creative practice and create more for play, not just for pay. One prompt/day, Monday-Friday. Share as I go and invite you to join.

So, how’s it going so far?

These field notes cover:

• What I made
• What I noticed
• What I love about camp
• What is not working, and
• What’s next?!

What I made:

• Camp HQ: Day 1
• Climate, Change! postcard: Day 8
• Seussical mother/daughter puppet show: Day 6
• Ohio Street Beach polaroid art: Day 1
• 15-minute found object collage: Day 5
• Potato stamp sheet music: Day 2
• Rainbow river rock: Day 3
• Terrible background music: Day 4
• A portrait of you: Day 7
• Mile high spinner: On the road

I made camp!

• Create jar full of 30 creative action verbs.
• Explore spinner full of 16 prompts for medium or muse.
• Experiment dice with 6 possible twists for each adventure.

Camp itself is one of my creations!

I also made camp portable so you can do it, too!

I created a version of the spinner you can do with a piece of paper, a pen, and a paperclip. This brought Camp HQ officially into the HERE & NOW.

I also made camp souvenirs…

I made memories…

I made things you can’t put on a shelf: a puppet show with my 8-year-old, a one-night-only waterfront performance in Vancouver, and sweet sweet memories.

Camp reveals how much nostalgia is both a muse and a medium for me.

I made 12 tiny movies…

Creative Camp has been helping me produce two daily art creations:

1. What I make with the prompt
2. The mini documentary telling the story of the day

I feel both incredibly creative and incredibly tired.

What I noticed:

Creative Camp keeps handing me rainbows. The YES AND! of it all reveals how multiple truths can and do exist at the same time.

Rainbow #1: The audience

The public element of this experiment threatens my creativity AND fuels it. The desire to optimize feels like the biggest threat to the project.

From the Creative Camp log:

I think that while I feel free + joyous, happy to be ANCHORED in the practice, the public element of this helps me keep going BUT the public element threatens CC at the same time. Adds the dark cloud, the bitter taste in my mouth. I finish a piece and I love it. Not only the actual CC creation I made that day, but then there’s the second piece of art I’m making – the mini documentary. And THAT piece also feels tremendously creative and joyous. This is WHY I’m a creative director. I get to use ALL my skills, fold them together, braid them, weave them, use them in ENDLESS diff ways. This project facilitates that. But when I bring it to the public, despite my best efforts to emotionally insure/insulate myself, it hurts and affects my experience of CC when the “content” isn’t received the way I hoped or expected (or have been trained to expect). It is the rhythm of the project itself – that I designed this way for a reason, thank you ME!!! – that calls me BACK away from letting the algo tell me what it needs to be. Or interpreting you, the audience’s, reaction and constantly taking your temperature, trying to figure you out. No. That threatens this project.

Rainbow #2: The work

Creative Camp is an inspiration for AND a distraction from my professional work as a creative director. The more I strengthen my personal creative practice, the more it INSPIRES and also DISTRACTS from my professional work. I have the opposite of creative block. I am a creative flood risk.

Rainbow #3: The art

My Creative Camp movies are the most enjoyable, free-flowing “content” I’ve ever made AND they are taking way too much time. Walking the tightrope of work into play or play into work.

Each rainbow reveals a dialectic that can FEED or CONSUME my creative practice. I think, like creating on the Internet, there is no fleeing the contradictions but walking the rainbow tightrope of each daily compromise.

Here’s what I love + what I don’t: 

What I love about camp 🏕️🎨:

I feel delighted that so many “I want to try that” projects I’ve envisioned for years have come to life and become camp souvenirs which serve as art, fond memories, and reminders to continue to deepen the practice.

“The easier, the better” is my favorite life bridge. This is showing up ALL the time outside of CC. It is helping me let go of perfectionism.

I feel myself noticing the world more and I enjoy it. I do truly feel I’m creating FOR ME and reluctantly allowing these platforms to benefit because that’s the devil’s bargain I must make.

CC has helped me reclaim my space and also the found objects of my life.

I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been, about how engaged my kiddo has been.

I’m taking all the ways CC is bleeding into my life, my work, my parenting. Yes, yes, all the yes! I’m taking the ON FIRE WITH CREATIVE IDEAS, LIFE IS A PALETTE vibes.

What isn’t working about camp: 😭

I think my biggest “fail” is the idea that others would participate in any meaningful way alongside me or that CC is even set up for that. Maybe had unrealistic expectations about people diving in. I could design it BETTER for others to participate but this is more meant to inspire ppl to think DIFFERENTLY about creativity in general and watch me being a silly fool and having fun + inspired to find their own.

Wrestling with how much time my mini movies are taking. It’s unsustainable! The creativity every day is do-able. But my eyes were too big for my stomach on documenting it this way. It’s SO intensive but also the twist is I LOVE IT??? Fantastic way to process. I love making these mini movies. So what’s a creative director with clients and a kiddo and a LIFE and a TRIATHLON TO COMPETE IN in 4 weeks to do?!?!?!?!?!

I’m trying to leave the desire to optimize, the fear of the audience’s rejection, and the perfectionism. Maybe some ways of structuring the videos? This one’s hard. I’m taking a lot with me. I already have so many souvenirs. What CAN I leave behind? Realistically? I don’t know!

What’s next for Creative Camp?

Process > product

• Keep collecting days toward 30 adventures
• Adjust camp pace without sacrificing momentum
• Keep the. movies because I love them AND!
• Experiment with easier ways of documenting
• Continue collaging each day onto the next

My favorite part of Creative Camp is integrating every piece of me into the creative collage.

Niches, meet wild card bitches.