While I was in Canada at the “Studies in Powder” class. One of my favorite topics when we all talked was about our favorite fused glass books. Bob recommended the book “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon. It’s a tiny little book in size, albeit huge in its content.
“Steal Like an Artist” is a real inspiration and ironically it has nothing to do with fused glass. At shows, I always struggle when I introduce myself as a fused glass artist, because I don’t see myself that way. I just love fused glass and I love creating with it.
The author lists 10 principles to assist people in discovering their artistic or creative side. To me it goes beyond being an artist – To me it’s about life.
Some of the profound yet obvious principles included that nothing is original, “all creative work builds on what came before”. It makes me think of movies – how many times has hollywood redone movies or they base it off of books.
Kind of sad – but if you think about it, most creative work is inspired by something else – especially nature. One of my favorite sayings is – why reinvent the wheel. We may alter things but how often is something truly completely new and not based on anything previously created?? The author discussed the difference between imitation and emulation. The book goes even farther and discusses how we are as people. Again pretty profound.
Another of the authors deep concepts is “the more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by” he goes into specific on how to do this and again – WOW. I blog about the different fused glass books I read, fusing techniques I’ve learned etc, so this way of learning is pretty powerful. Ironically, that’s one of the reasons I like taking classes in person, I always ask my favorite teachers, who do you respect as a artist. The reason is we are all influenced by someone and as this author notes, if you respect an artist, find out who they respect, and so on.
There are so many inspirational passages and quotes in “Steal like an Artist”, that all I can say is buy the book and read it. It’s a real eye opener.
Bob said he tries to read “Steal Like an Artist” every year. I think I will try to do the same thing. It’s a powerful little book that really gets to the heart of why we should all add some creativity to our lives and the best way to encourage that creativity
To see my fused glass work or more of my reviews please refer to my website Elegant Fused Glass by Karen.
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Keeping my Kiln warm,
Karen
PS I think I’ll get his second book “show your work”.
