Between conception and translation mode, or why I don’t want to go home

This is the first time in weeks, since returning from France, that I've spent an entire day in the studio without actually making anything. Tired from a draining week at work, I spent most of the day doing administrative tasks (prepping for open studios), practicing yoga and reading. Times like this I know there is some sort of idea percolating and it needs a little space to develop. So I shift from the push, push, push of studio "realizations" to a neutral gear and give myself a little TLC.

Still, not “producing” is an uncomfortable feeling for me and I thus concocted an excuse for my “wasted time” while reading an interview with David Edwards in the latest copy of ArchitectureBoston (Fall 2009).

He is quoted as saying, “The hallmark of creative people is that they try to shock themselves. They try to go back to that state where they’re throwing themselves into an unknown environment.” He goes on to describe how he crosses back and forth from the artistic to the scientific environments, “like jumping into cold water”. (Like purposefully getting lost in East Boston? Or taking the primitive hiking path instead of staying on the beaten trail?)

He goes on, “I think that creative people are very sensitive to their dependence on environment, both the human, or architectural, environment and the intellectual, or creative environment. So they tend to put themselves in stimulating environments. Creativity seems to fall into phases: a starter or conception mode, a translation mode, where we’re developing an idea, and a realization mode. We gravitate toward the environment that supports those phases.”

So soon I will leave this tranquil studio and return to the cold waters of Boston where the frenetic pace of work and urban living feeds the fire of creativity. Hopefully while traveling between the two worlds tonight, I'll slip into "translation mode" and understand what comes next...