Creativity is Collective and Collaborative

Thoughts on the cycles of creativity, the larger systems at play, and why we should keep making art

Creative Fuel is a newsletter about the intersection of creativity and everyday life. There are essays, prompts, Q&As, and more. Paid subscribers have full access to the prompt archive.

Before we get started: I just dropped new prints in my shop!

A percentage of my shop sales and paid newsletter subscriptions this month will be donated to Global Fund for Women and The Center for Cultural Power.

I got back from leading a multi-day creative retreat earlier this week. I would like to pause here so that I can say this: what an absolute joy to get to do this kind of thing for work, thank you Freeflow Institute! 

For the first 24 hours, I was flat out exhausted. I was energy depleted from being “on” for an extended period of time, but with inspiration and ideas churning in my mind from the days of dedicated creative practice and community. In other words: the good kind of tired. 

I had written down clear notes and ideas for myself in my notebook, truths about work and art found in moments of clarity that I didn’t want to forget. Amongst them: “how do you hold a question without immediately needing to seek an answer?” and “what is a posture of curiosity?” and “MAKE WEIRD SHIT.” You know, the kind of things that make total sense in the moment and afterwards seem a little cryptic but you’re happy that you left yourself some clues to figure it all out.

The following day I was still riding on that high, a sense of purpose and direction pushing me forward, recommitting to my own creative practice. But then that glow started to wear off, and the twitchiness I had been feeling before going to the retreat set back in. 

An impending sense of stress and financial frustration when remembering that I still didn’t have any big work projects lined up for spring. A lurking darkness when my brain started to think about taxes. And then an overarching questioning of, “what are you even doing?” 

I went from creative sweet spot and flow state to bottom of the tank in a matter of hours. Part of this letdown is spending several days in community with people and creating something together in the process. Summer camp for adults! It’s a shift to return to your regular life (the one where the work and tax realities exist) and figure out how to plug back in. I work mostly solitary, which I love, but after spending so much deep time with other people, steeped in questions, ideas, and discussions, it was a change to come back and be on my alone with my creative thoughts again. 

Another part of this twitchy, negative feeling is simply the ebb and flow of creative process, and I’ve gone through these cycles enough times to know that it is just that: a cycle. It’s a dip, a low moment, a lull. Or as musician Kaïa Kater puts it, “Sometimes I think I’m a fucking genius and that I’ve reached Mount Olympus and then other days I’m really low.”

That knowledge is valuable for knowing that the moment is impermanent, but it doesn’t make it any less emotionally loaded. I know that for me, this is a very real and expected part of being a working artist. It’s more of an “allow and move through” than a “resist and respond” situation. 

I know that this chunk of the year always feels a little uncomfortable for myself and lots of others. I think it’s the discomfort of the in-between time, the readiness for spring and a renewed sense of ourselves and the world around us, but our feet still clomping along in our heavy winter boots, our bodies still wanting and needing more sleep than we think. 

We’re not ready to immediately jump from hibernation mode to energetic spring mode. (Also: the equinox isn’t for another couple of weeks, it’s still technically winter). We need some gentle steps and space in-between. We need not a hard, immediate change, but a kinder shift. 

Spring does that, the cycle of flowers, and plants that slowly emerge. You don’t just wake up one day surrounded by blooms and bright leaves. It takes time. The snowdrops pop up from the ground, you keep an eye on the spots where the trilliums usually come out wondering when they’ll appear. Then come the nettles and the bright green sword fern fiddleheads that look like elephant trunks. It’s a gradual, ongoing shift, taken moment by moment, day by day. We could learn from that. 

There are these natural cycles that deserve our attention, but a lot of the talk at our retreat was also about how much the systems that we exist within contribute to and exacerbate how we feel about our work and creativity—why or why not we put a value on art, how we think of productivity, what the expectations are on ourselves, what we give ourselves permission to do, etc. 

We are impacted by larger forces, yet we often take an individual approach on how to fix them. It’s what leads to the tyranny of faux self-care, what makes “burnout” a part of our cultural vocabulary and puts the onus on the individual instead of the systems responsible for exploitation, or what has many of us fixating on how much we feel like impostors instead of critiquing the external forces at play. 

As Ayesha Khan writes, “thinking of ourselves as individuals in an already individualistic society is innately more limiting than it is helpful. When we embrace that we are inter-dependent beings just like any other life form— a whole world of care opens up to us even if it may take practice to seek it out & ease into it.”

I don’t have an answer to all of this, I just know that it is all lodged in my brain, and it continually shows up whenever I am thinking about the practice of art and creativity. 

What is the role of the artist in this space? What is the role of creativity in this space?

What does it mean to be a working artist within the confines of capitalism? 

What does it mean to have a sustainable amount of work? 

What does it mean to challenge hustle culture, to move more slowly, to be more intentional, even when it feels like you still need to hustle sometimes to make it all work and pay for your self-employed health insurance and cross your fingers that nothing detrimental happens? 

What is the point of making art in the face of all of that?

Everything.

I truly mean that.

In the face of all of the powers at play, there is something empowering about actively investing in art in creativity. In choosing to connect ideas, in choosing to think laterally, in choosing to put something into the world because we believe in its beauty, in its role in facilitating a moment of joy, and in its power for connection.

We are interdependent beings, and so is our creativity.

I’ve been watching Fight the Power on PBS recently, and if you need a reminder of the inextricable link between art, culture, and politics, this is it. Creativity and art are often acts of resistance, and they inform the system at large. Many years ago I saw artist Favianna Rodriguez speak about the importance of investing and arts and culture, because larger change doesn’t come from the top down. If we want change, then, “we should be moving culture, we should be activating artists.”

We may act as individual artists and creatives but we are part of something larger, a collective organism that shifts and adapts, pushes against and changes the times, creates movements and moments, challenges and resists, soothes and cares. If we want to create change, then we have to keep creating. 

Since March is Women’s History Month, I’ve been putting together prompts for this newsletter and themes for the weekly Creative Fuel sessions all inspired by women artists. In researching some of them I am reminded of the collective organism that we are all part of. 

The revolutionary brushstrokes and lines and lyrics that were created by women artists long ago have helped to set the stage that we currently work and create in. In the face of sexism, politics, power, and oppression, the fact that they were often remembered as anecdotes to male counterparts (lovers, wives, muses), they created anyway. Whatever ignited their passionate drive for their creative practice has influenced and inspired generations long after they are gone. 

Not all (ok, very few) women artists have gotten the respect and admiration that they deserve. Some have been lost to history. Some are in the process of being newly discovered, decades, even centuries after their work was made. Others, be they well-known or not, in their creative infancy or in their prime, are working amongst us today, their paintings, their words, their movements, their sculptures, all part of this collective, cultural scaffolding that we are continually working to shape. 

This is a reminder that an individual creative act is often a collective one. 

We don’t even need to share our creative work for it to influence spaces outside of ourselves. Investing in our creative practice changes how we view the world, it shifts how we pay attention, it encourages us to stay open, it asks us to rethink what we know to be true. It asks of us to get a little angry, but also, to have a little more kindness, a little more grace. It asks us to create beauty when there appears to be none. It requires us to find new approaches.  

That inevitably shifts how we show up and participate in our communities. Making art may often be an act of self-care, a moment that you give to yourself, a way to process emotions and feelings, a vehicle for self-expression, but this is what makes it part of our collective bond. 

We take in the world around us, we listen, we question, we process, and then we put something back into it. That is to say: we’re not functioning because of genius or individual greatness here. Creativity is collaborative and collective, always informed by what is happening around is.

Keep making art, keep investing in creativity, because what is the other option?

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A LITTLE CREATIVE INSPIRATION + OTHER TIDBITS

You know this is hanging in my studio. Send this poster to your favorite art collector.

Since I mentioned Fight the Power, you know that I’ve been listening to Fight the Power: Chuck D’s Ultimate Hip Hop Playlist.

A lot of my Creative Fuel cohort is taking part in the 100 Day Project. I think this is such a wonderful way to participate in an individual creative act that’s also very much collective. After a few years of doing various iterations (some complete, some not), I’ll say this: be gentle with yourself and make it work for you. Would love to see what you’re making if you’re doing it.

Definitely ordering a copy of Cascadia Field Guide.

Can neuroscience help us understand why we like certain pieces of art?

Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book (which longtime readers know is one of my favorite books of all time) is being made into a movie.

Making space for mother-artists.

When we go to the theatre our hearts beat together.

On photographer Diane Arbus.

When nature is the artist.

Portraits of Iran’s feminist rebels.

The designer behind IKEA’s most famous chair.

The ultimate collaboration: car alarm and piano.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS, ETC.

A Weekly Dose of Creativity: We’ve got the regular Wednesday Creative Fuel sessions, free to attend! Every week this month is themed around various women artists.

Hilma Forever and Always: I’m doing a casual virtual watercolor workshop inspired by Hilma af Klint’s work for the Nordic Museum on March 23. Info + tickets

Bike + Creativity Retreats!!! I’m doing two Swift Adventure Co. trips this year, one in May in the San Juan Islands, and the other in July on the Olympic Peninsula. Come and ride bikes, make art, and drink coffee.

Other ways to support: buy something my shop, buy one of my books, come to a Creative Fuel workshop or free Wednesday session, or send this newsletter to someone who you think might enjoy it!

A percentage of my shop sales and paid newsletter subscriptions this month will be donated to Global Fund for Women and The Center for Cultural Power.