’ÄúAnd so, as you go forward in Life...’Äù
Sean Kernan
Assignment 4: Article Discussion
Submitted By Carrie Shetler
MM430a | M. Cooper
8.30.04
http://www.commarts.com/ca/coldesign/seaK_202.html
Graduation address for photography and film students at Rockport College in Rockport, Maine.
As a student, lots of people care about your work:Kernan tells students that "by Monday it will be down to that one person who got you into all this in the first place’Äîyour inspiration, your truest critic, your most faithful supporter, your lover and sometime-enemy...yourself."
- Teachers
- Fellow Students
- Friends
Multiple kinds of intelligence influence us as artist:"You integrate them in ways beyond understanding. And you don’Äôt need to understand them, any more than you had to understand grammar to begin speaking."
- Musical Intelligence
- Interpersonal Intelligence
- Verbal Intelligence
- Mathematical Intelligence
- Kinetic Intelligence
When something happens in our work that surprises us, we ask, "How did I do that?" "You make something that says you are better than you thought, larger, wider, deeper, fuller. And once it happens, you want it again...and again."
By stimulating our minds we change our perception and thus, changing the way we create. "If you feel this happening, the trick is not to try to name it. Just keep it going as long as you can. Surf it if you can. Name it later."
Kernan says that jobs that are creative aren't really artistic. "It can seem artistic because it uses some of the same skills. But think about it. When you do artwork, you leave on your journey without knowing the destination. If you have goals for your concepts, they are there to be exceeded."
Your creative death, Kernan states, comes when you meet the Sphinx. "You tend to encounter her in the middle of some struggle or upheaval. And she puts her terrifying question in a slightly exasperated voice. She asks, 'What are you doing?'
If you look at the question honestly, it will send your thoughts back to what you started out to do. It wasn’Äôt to get a job, it was to find things out."
Once you find a job, you are not always looking for the impulses and ideas that generate creative success; you are working towards commercial success. Kenan's advice is to venture out of your field into others, like music or acting. "Do it to change your mind again. Do it seriously, give it your time. Don’Äôt worry about doing it well, just do it. Let it happen in you. I tell you that something will come alive in you again."
The Roadrunner Epiphany: "With luck, you’Äôll have that wonderful experience that mixes epiphany with the moment in a Roadrunner cartoon when the coyote runs over the edge of the cliff and out across the air and doesn’Äôt fall. The trick, if you’Äôre a coyote, is to deliberately not take it in that you’Äôre running on air. The trick if you’Äôre an artist is to take that startled energy, that awareness of awakeness, and somehow keep it going without stopping to think, How am I doing this?"
Kernan quotes Serra: "The place where you are dumbfounded by your own lack of understanding is the place to start working. Once you stop doubting you might as well stop working".
