On Creativity: The Secret to Creating Great Art

    My stint as a visiting artist at Hartwick College earlier this year was nothing like I expected yet everything I could have wanted. Being placed somewhat unexpectedly in the role of educator alongside the familiar one of puppet-builder proved both challenging and rewarding in a myriad of ways I could have never anticipated. It is an old axiom that the teacher learns more than the students. I found this to be very true. One of the most surprising aspects of teaching for me was the way it confronts you in a very real and tangible way with what you know.

     Since the end of my residence, I have been slowly trying to compile observations about living the creative life in a series of essays. I am attempting to confront the realities of the creative process in as pragmatic and rational manner as I can. I do this partly to record my own ideas in a coherent form, but mostly out of a sense of gratitude to my former students and colleagues. It is my fervent hope that these writings can help others along their journey. To this end, I will endeavor to speak in the broadest possible terms, using the word "Artist" in it's most general sense.  

    On a personal note to all those I associated with during my Residency: I apologize for those moments when I could be cranky irrational and overly demanding. The only defense I have to offer is that I felt that I could relentlessly demand excellence from you because time and again you proved capable of it.
I am extremely proud of the work we did together!

"Here are my Principles, and if you don't like them...well, I have others!"

-Groucho Marx

The Secret of Creating Great Art

There is a moment that every working creative dreads. It is that moment when an enthusiastic and appreciative person asks “How do you do that?” They don't mean how was one specific project accomplished. They want to know how to PAINT, How to WRITE, How to ACT! It as if the artist could, by some magical act of beneficence tell them a simple universal truth that would part the veil and magically welcome the questioner into the sacred order. Any answer that can be given is going to come as a terrible letdown. It will ring false or trite in the ears of the audience. They come to you seeking to unlock Truth and Beauty and are forced to make due with cliches like “Write what you know”.

No artist can tell you what you want to learn in a few short sentences. They can give you a few pointers, certainly they can draw you a map, but you need to embark on your own voyage. The process is always going to be your greatest teacher. I have been fortunate enough to have had the guidance of many wonderful instructors, both in a formal and casual capacity, and have found their insights of inestimable value. At the end of the day, however, I must admit it was the wood that taught me the most about how to carve.

I have discovered that there is,after all, a great and universal truth to the creative process that can be stated simply and succinctly. Here it is-At long last revealed the secret that every successful artist knows! I should warn you, it's terribly disappointing the first time you learn it

The secret to creating great artwork is simply this: Make bad art.

Behind every masterpiece painted lies a graveyard of terrible drawings. Every soaring violin composition reached it's heights on a scaffold of hours worth of scratchy shrieked notes. That beautiful inspiring passage from your favorite writer is only possible because of pages and pages of poisonous prose. Those dancers that float effortlessly across the stage have fallen more times then you can count

This is another one of those stories we tell ourselves as artists: Some people are just “born with it”. They are naturally talented, and so opportunity falls in their laps. They are blessed by the gods with something divine that makes them more that the rest of us.
That's true. It's called a work ethic.

Don't get me wrong, Natural talent is real. There are people who are more musically inclined, more graceful, more visually oriented from birth. I have met these people. This is an excellent start. It opens the door for them but rest assured they have to climb the mountain just like anyone else.

Here's what really happens: A young person shows some aptitude for a task. They are praised by their friends and family, and so they continue to try. With a little more effort and a little more positive reinforcement, they realize that they really enjoy doing this more than anything else. Because they are doing what they love, they embrace it. They work hard and never notice the effort because they enjoy every minute. Obstacles become challenges. The desire for praise turns inward. Instead of wanting the praise of parents, the young artist wants to be the best, to say something original. Parents worry about these new found obsessions and start to encourage their child to do pursue other interests. Peers may even mock the young artist for their strange new obsession, but by now none of this matters as much as the passion. Like any other addiction, it takes hold of the person's being and begins to define them. As the process of learning the craft gets more difficult, the artist becomes less and less capable of extracting themselves until they can barely imagine doing or being anything else. I know this to be so because it is my story, along with thousands of others.

The special trait that artists have that you believe you don't isn't talent. It's passion and determination. Successful creative people are simply those who continued to work. Stop telling yourself that you aren't “Born with it” or whatever other convenient excuse you are hiding behind. Nobody wants to hear how you can't even draw a stick figure. That's a cop-out. If you truly want to draw, pick up a pad of paper and fill it in. Once you've finished that one, move on to the next. Make your mistakes like everyone else, and learn from them. Don't expect to get it right the first time. You won't. Keep trying. Each attempt teaches you something new. Remember, you are honing a skill. It's a lifelong process.

The Tempest:In Detail

I finally got around to documenting some of the puppets used in the production of The Tempest. Here are some of the better close ups

Ariel: My initial idea for Ariel was that s/he would be a shape-shifter and take on the form of various birds. the director, Malissa Kano-White was kind enough to indulge me. We had two actors playing the role. They would alternate lines accenting the amorphous male/female nature of the character and allowing for a great range of motion. The eagle worked as sort of the embodiment of the storm 

 The heron became a source of comic relief, due in large part to the actors' manipulation

 The owl was Ariel's gentle side.

 I tried to make the wings as naturalistic as possible

 The Director wanted Ariel to have a "True Form" that was non-corporeal and abstract, possibly made up of several components. After a lot of discussion and experimentation, we agreed on a floating two part mask based around the idea of a Celtic spiral. each puppeteer would control the mouth of one half. It required a great deal of co-operation and coordination

 The mask halves could split and join together, permitting them to work autonomously or in tandem. I initially designed the halves to match, but later realized  they would have more personality if each side "spiraled" a different direction. Here is the "Up" side...

 ...and the "Down" side. The puppets were backed with black fabric which made it possible for them to vanish against the dark background simply by being turned around

 Sebastian was one of the villains. I based my character design around archetypes. For this character, I wanted a lean and angular "Grand Vizier" look. at nearly six feet, this was easily the tallest of the puppets

 For Stephano the drunken butler, I wanted to accent the clownish sense of imperiousness and self centered nature. I gave him the proportions of a toddler. He has a vaguely porcine aspect.

 Several of the gender roles were reversed in this production. The wise councilor Gonzalo became Gonzala, a feisty yet kindly grandmother figure

 Trinculo the jester was one of my favorites. I wanted him to have an air of constant anxiety along with a  buffoonish cast.

 Antonio, Prospera's usurping brother, I wanted to have the air of arrogant entitlement of a "Burra Sahib"

 One of the concepts I wish I had more time to explore was the living nature of the island. I wanted to create the feeling that any part of the environment could spring to life. For example: this pile of boulders that was onstage for the whole show...

... became a terrifying "Hell-hound" to chase the clowns offstage. I actually researched medieval hunting breeds to get the look just right. I purposely used the same painted muslin that our set designer used for the backdrop to help them blend in

 The same is true with this seemingly innocuous  log of driftwood -

 ...that becomes a massive wolfhound!

Tempest: Jason's Shots

Here are some fantastic photographs of our final rehearsal taken by my good friend Jason Sexton. His website is:http://jasonsextonphoto.com/

Tempest: Before and After

    I have very self-consciously not posted anything on this blog for some time. Partly because, as I stated in my last entry, I didn't want to give anything away to the audience before they had the opportunity to see the show. Another element in this decision was knowing how involved a process this build would be. In short, you can either talk about swimming the English Channel, or start swimming. You can not do both at the same time. Now that the dust has settled, and the final curtain has come down, I can discuss a little of my process and display some of the results here.

    It should be noted I can only speak to MY end of the creative process of The Tempest, because that is the only part I was wholly involved in, and thus,fully understand. Nobody should ever make the mistake of believing that I accomplished anything on my own. Theatre is by it's very nature, a collaborative process. This show was the work of many hands. I am deeply grateful to everyone who participated in The Tempest. It would have been a very different entity  if even one of the 30+ people involved were not a part of it. I intend to give full credit to certain key players in a later post. For now please accept my deepest gratitude and know that you made this show both nothing like I expected and everything I could have hoped for.

Last November I posted a few of my early process shots. I thought I would begin by showing you what these puppets look like now that they are complete. If you want to see the drastic changes these have undergone you can check out my original blog here

First here is one of the two seagulls that were in the show. They have come quite a long way from the bald foam. If you look carefully, you can see that two of the rods have been repaired. I wish that I had managed to take better pictures during the show and rehearsals. one of the most enduring images of this production for me was this seagull silhouetted against the purple lit Cyc curtain.

Next here is the head of our heron. Because of his "eyebrows" and the funny walk the puppeteers found for him during rehearsal, he has been christened "Groucho". Notice that he has different eyes from the original process shot.  Also. the puppeteer who operated him found the original controls cumbersome. I needed to shorten them for her ease of manipulation and comfort

 Finally, Trinculo. Aside from one stage, Trinculo was the "guinea pig". He defined the look and feel for the rest of the human characters for me, I only wish I could take credit for the beautiful costumes of these puppets, but they are the work of Kristen Palazzoli. I will discuss them in great length later. The hair turned out nothing like I planned, but in retrospect, couldn't have logically been any different.

More later. Thanks to all!

Tempest: First Look

     I'm in an interesting position as a chronicler of my creative endeavors.  I'm working on a big project (A full stage version of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" using puppets). It is a project that I'm very excited about and naturally want to discuss in great length. I'm incorporating all kinds of new building techniques and doing work that I'm extremely proud of for it. On the other hand, I want to avoid doing just that because I want my audience to come into the theater with as few preconceptions as possible. The more I tell you now, the more you'll know to expect later and the piece won't seem quite as fresh and new. I don't want to spoil the surprise.

    After a little internal wrangling, I've decided to carefully tip my hand on occasion, to give anyone interested the smallest peek behind the curtain from time to time. My hope is that I can keep everyone generally aware of what I'm up to without, as it were, giving away the gold. 

   So- without further babbling from me here are a few process shots which I hope you will enjoy. bear in mind that what I'm showing you are very much works in progress at this stage and will change a great deal by opening curtain.

This gull is a simple 3 rod puppet built out of polyfoam for simple movement. It can flap and turn it's head from side to side. It has a wingspan of approx 3 ft. 

Slightly more complex is this heron's head. It is also built out of foam with a latex and cheesecloth overlay. The beak is operated by a simple trigger mechanism. Learning how to make simple resin cast eyes was a real boon for this project and my work in general.

Most of the puppets for "The Tempest" are going to be in a modified Bunraku style. For ease of performance I'm going to keep my design of the rigging as simple as possible. In the human characters this means a nodding head rig rather than a mouth trigger. Few of my cast will have any experience in puppetry and I want to make sure that they learn the basics of lip sync without being wholly dependent on it.

 Trinculo is a court jester and one of Shakespeare's comic characters. I exaggerated his facial features to cartoonish proportions and gave him a vaguely worried and hangdog expression. I want him to be tall and lanky, in contrast to Stephano the butler, who I intend to make short and stout.This will hopefully suggest the classic "Abbot and Costello" comic dynamic for these two clowns.

Into The Storm

I went to the post office today.

 Ordinarily this is exactly the sort of thing I wouldn't bother to write about for the very good reason that it is not interesting. Being the bright and perceptive reader that you are, you have probably already come to the conclusion that there must have been something interesting about this trip to the post office. Right you are! The envelope pictured above is being mailed to this address:

 Aha! See? Now I've piqued your interest haven't I? Want to take a peek inside the envelope? Of course you do!

 This actually gives me the opportunity to officially announce something that I've been sitting on for some time. If all goes as planned, In the Spring semester of 2013 I will be staging a version of Williams Shakespeare's "The Tempest" through Hartwick College here in beautiful Oneonta NY! The envelope contains the Letter of Intent and One page 8 1/2 X 11 visual that are the first step in applying for the 2013  Jim Henson Foundation Grant. (The project will take place with or without their funding, it'll just be really cool if I get it.) To give you some idea of how exciting this really is here is my original sketchpad  where i first started designing and thinking about Tackling "The Tempest". If it looks a little worn, this is because it is twelve years old. I started working on this idea just before I graduated college! I'm going to post the text of my letter of intent because I think it does a good job explaining what I have in mind.

Dear Jim Henson Foundation Selection Committee:

                Shakespeare’s The Tempest  could have been written specifically for puppetry. It has it all: potential for cinematic staging, poetic imagery, magic, wonder and some of the most nuanced characters in literature. When I first read it shortly before graduating college, I instantly wanted to create a full stage production using puppets and puppetry techniques. Now nearly twelve years later, in collaboration with Malissa Kano-White, Hartwick College, and hopefully with the support of a Project Grant from The Jim Henson Foundation, I finally will have the opportunity to bring this show to life before an underserved audience in the Northern Appalachians.

                I envision Prospero’s island to be a mental as well as an external landscape, simultaneously a shelter and wilderness. As such, I plan on drawing inspiration for the set from old weathered books and the craggy coastline of the Pacific Northwest. The set itself should be, in essence, a giant puppet, alive and teeming with spirits and animals. Scenes could change by the flipping of a page, or the sea animated by actors manipulating fabric.

I intend to use the medium of puppetry to poetically explore the psychological depths of the characters, illuminating their growth and issues of autonomy and control in ways that more conventional staging cannot.  Puppetry makes it possible to use dreamlike symbolic imagery. The play’s most magical character, Ariel, can be shown to shape-shift gracefully from one bird form to another without losing her identity. Caliban, a creature of the stone and soil of the island, would be capable to literally emerge from the ground.

                With a combination of traditional shadow puppets and digital projection, the shadow screen will make it possible to show atmospheric effects (i.e. lighting) and act as a living subconscious for the production.  Petroglyph forms and manuscript illuminations moving across the screen will make it possible for the audience to peer in on the dreams and intentions of those onstage.

The production has a projected cast of ten to fifteen performers who will perform multiple roles utilizing various puppetry techniques including modified Bunraku, shadows, mask, and costume work, alongside traditional acting.  Rehearsals would begin in January of 2013 with the performances to be in April or May of that year.  

For me personally telling the story of The Tempest using puppetry techniques on a full stage is the dream of a lifetime. The Jim Henson Foundation’s kind assistance would help to make this dream a reality.

                                                                                                                             Sincerely,

                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                  John A. Ryan

                                                                                                                                                       Puppeteer
                                                                                                                                                       April 2, 2012


Here also is the visual that I included. Due to technical difficulties that I won't bore you with, I only have the "low res." version on my computer right now. what I mailed looks a bit cleaner and nicer.

If you want a closer look at the concept art and the sketchpad page I used, Here they are. I'm not going to repost the Mouse Puppet picture. Anyone who cares to can always revisit him Here.

Thanks to Joe and Hope Von Stengel getting the ball rolling and  for their support, technical and otherwise, also to Malissa Kano-White, my new co-conspirator and creative partner in this.Working with you is going to be fun!  Thanks also to Gennarose Pope for her usual eagle eyed proof reading  Proof reading  credits also go to the amazing Susan Forte and the lovely Jeannette Kjos. I would be very remiss if I didn't give a big shout out to my roommate Joe La Fave  partly for the help with photoshop,  partly for the proofread, but mostly for politely ignoring the fact that he lives with someone who frequently behaves like something out of a Lewis Carroll fever-dream!

We find out in June if I get to continue the application process. I will of course keep everyone posted as events warrant. So stay tuned! Over the course of the next year, you will all get to watch what could very well be my descent into madness!