The Material of Creativity
For the past five years we’ve asked a different artist, illustrator, or designer to interpret the theme of inspiration for the cover of our January/February issue. The results, beginning with Chip Kidd’s whirling dervishes and Spirographs in 2010, have been surprising, insightful, and, yes indeed, inspiring. Stuart Bradford’s collage for this issue is no exception. Every time I look at the cover I see something new—or rather, my mind makes a new associative leap, propelling me forward across untrampled psychological and emotional terrain. Just now, for example, I saw the line of buttons (arguably the most mundane objects in the collage) and remembered the fabric bag, filled with hundreds of buttons, that my grandma kept on a hook in her utility closet. When I was very young, I would dump them out on her carpeted living room floor and try to find matching sets among the many different sizes, shapes, and colors. I never really explored that memory, until now. Suddenly I’m back on that carpet, half listening to my mom and grandma talk about...what? My parents’ impending separation? My grandpa’s recent death? The state of the family farm, which years later we would have to sell? Or were they hatching their plan, doomed to fail, to sign me up for piano lessons? And with that, I’m off and writing in an entirely new direction.
It turns out that’s exactly the kind of reaction that Bradford intended. “I found the theme of the issue inspiring myself, as it values the ordinary and mundane as the very material of creativity,” he replied when I asked about his new work. “It reminds me of how the universal is evoked in the particular. Collage itself is very often made of the same ordinary, everyday materials. The fun thing is the juxtaposition that generates surprise. The choice of fragmented elements tells an incomplete story that depends on the viewer to complete—I find that fascinating.”
Our special section on inspiration (page 46) includes a similar collection of seemingly disparate elements: Elizabeth Kostova’s measuring spoons (48), Harryette Mullen’s urban tumbleweed (50), Ethan Canin’s socks (53), Jay Baron Nicorvo’s blown-glass egg (57), Jamie Quatro’s kitchen knives (63), Dan Chelotti’s fresh tomatoes (74), and more. So many different sizes, shapes, and colors. As writers, we pick up the pieces and complete the story. That’s our job, our privilege.
It’s a new year. We have a lot to do. I can’t wait. Can you?
