Twyla Tharp, #3
People ask me where I get my ideas, and I say everywhere. It appears I’m not the only one. I also tell folks not all my ideas are good ones, but I just get so many I pick the better ones and work on them. I have so many ideas, I’ll never be able to act on a tenth of them (which is probably a good thing!), but I’m clearly in the habit of finding inspiration in many places.
And as for teaching, I always tell my students to feel free to ignore my ideas if they don’t work for them. The purpose of my ideas is to let the student figure out for themselves what will work for them. If my idea creates a “yuk no, that won’t work” response, that’s GOOD, because it has helped my student learn one more thing about what they do or don’t want to do!
Twyla Tharp wrote on P. 10 of The Creative Habit:
“Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.”
BINGO!
And speaking of raw material (literally), I’ll have a new post tomorrow about my hand-dyed fabric from Carol’s class. Cheers!