The Groove 142 - Why Creativity Starts with a Growth Mindset
WHY CREATIVITY STARTS WITH A GROWTH MINDSET
Creativity is a human capacity that is malleable and expandable and requires a growth mindset.
If you want to create meaningful services, products, works of art, books, systems, or leave a memorable legacy in your job, you need to have the willingness to try something new, even if it can result in failure. You also have to be disciplined and be willing to always keep learning. These are characteristics of someone who lives with a growth mindset.
Seventy-five years ago, when Betty Woodman began making clay custard cups, she never imagined that she’d forever change how ceramics are perceived in the art world. Born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1930, Woodman started her career as a functional potter in high school, falling in love with the medium of clay. She pushed its boundaries and herself, all the way to a retrospective at The Met Museum in 2006, alongside representation by some of the most prestigious galleries in the United States and the satisfaction of having merged crafts and contemporary art in a way nobody else had done before. Peter Schjeldahl, the notable art critic for The New Yorker, called her “beyond original, all the way to sui generis”.
Woodman was an artist fueled and fed by a growth mindset.
Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
Betty Woodman in her New York studio in 1996.
There’s a simple test to see if you’ve been holding onto your safety blanket: do you think that you are so good and efficient at what you do that there’s nothing else to learn? Have you found a way of doing things that people love but has been repetitive for years? If you answered yes to one or both of these two questions, it’s time to step out of your comfort zone.
For Woodman, first it was functional wares, then after attending the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University in New York and teaching pottery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she moved to Fiesole, near Florence, for one year. In Italy, she met potters who had no formal training but were making spectacular works on clay. There she realized “the first lesson I learned… was that the rules are just meant to be broken.”
And break the rules she did. She got married to artist George Woodman in 1953 and relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Not knowing yet how to make money off her ceramics, she decided to open a store called Roadrunner Pottery, where she would consistently sell out.
Later she’d move with her family to Boulder, Colorado where she taught at the University of Colorado and it occurred to her to turn her house into a gallery twice a year. “We would empty the house and the studio and clean it; take all the furniture out and put in shelves and tables, and I would arrange my work there… and it went on for two days. And I was able, essentially, to sell what I made in that way and to make an income doing this.” Woodman recalled that she had a big mailing list (before mailing lists were a thing), and she had been building a strong and loyal collector base on her own. She understood that all growth starts at the end of your comfort zone.
What’s Dangerous Is Not to Evolve
Installation of Aeolian Pyramid, 2001/2006 at the Met Museum, 44 vases, each 28-30 inches high, glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, paint.
Change terrifies us. Our brains perceive danger every time we confront going through a shift. But being stuck is even more frightening. Continuously developing new skills and proactively seeking more complex challenges are characteristics of people who evolve.
Evolution was in Woodman’s DNA. By the 1970s she started making ceramics that were not so functional, like a “pillow pitcher” in numerous variations, which featured rounded, pillow-like shapes and vibrant, hand-painted designs.
Later she added fabrics in fetes of ambitious experimentation. There was lacquer paint on earthenware and terra sigilatta, stoneware and porcelain. Eventually there were paintings on canvases accompanying the ceramics and entire installations covering floors and walls.
In the early 1980s, galleries in New York started to take heed. That’s when the Max Protetch Gallery contacted her and offered her shows and representation. This was an event that pushed her to take another bold step, to move her family to New York. “We're 50 years old, and we're middle-aged. We can live a comfortable life in Colorado or we can figure out a way to do something that would certainly be more interesting. So we opted for that."
Woodman was proactive, dynamic and at the forefront of the evolution of her career. “There are plenty of artists who don't continue to experiment and move forward with their practice… You should understand each time I have a new opportunity it gives me permission to go ahead, do something new - there is no point in redoing what I already know. What is interesting is that when an artist gets accepted in the market, it's often for a particular thing, and people can find it hard to accept new work. But you can't just stay in one place. I don't understand how an artist can only have one idea.”
Be Disciplined
Roman Fresco / Pleasures and Places, 2010, glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, laquer, paint, canvas, wood. Installation view at the American Academy in Rome.
Discipline and rigidity are not to be confused. Discipline is taking what you do seriously, knowing that your work is important and that for it to grow, it needs your time and attention. With a growth mindset, ambition, focus and passion, discipline brews on its own.
One of the foremost psychologists in the field of creativity, Professor Edward de Bono, always insisted that creativity “requires a lot of discipline”. MIT professor Bill Aulet agrees with that statement and believes not only that entrepreneurship can be learned but that it responds favorably to a disciplined approach.
Betty Woodman was no exception to this rule: “I am very interested in the work ethic of putting in your hours… what you were supposed to do as an artist: you put in your hours everyday… This is no longer true. Now it's very different… For instance, I never wait to have a show to do the work!”
Creativity and success accelerate if you are not afraid of admitting that you don’t know something. If you are willing to learn and expand your skills, and put in the time and effort to see your work grow and evolve, the results will be evident.
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