Response to Tharp reading

The general problem that I can see myself facing during senior studio is being too structured instead of just going with the flow. Tharp talks about how artists sometimes focus on big ideas and how from there it can be hard to construct good creative ideas. I feel like this was becoming an issue for me as an artist as well. I came into the class with a picture of what I was going to do. Something like this can get an artist into "trouble" creatively. When I sat down to try and illustrate my big awesome idea, I became frustrated. It was too big of an idea and I did not know where to start. I wanted to create a big mural of my friends, my sports teams, my general high school experience. HOW DO YOU DO THAT? WHERE DO YOU BEGIN? I feel like using Tharp's method of scratching," digging through everything to find something," would work for me. I began to feel inspired, scratching through an excerpt of her self help book. Maybe if I broke high school down into mini events and big moments I could truly find my creative spark and get the ball rolling. I began this with my A2D art project where I unwillingly created 25 notecards branched off of the main theme of high school. From there I began to see what events and types of art I really wanted to throw myself into. Coming into the class with a huge structured image of what I wanted my art to be was not the right approach for me. Each person, as Tharp points out, gets there inspiration from different places and different things.