Grow your own creativity
Sarah Mosher
Like so many people, I had found my way into a career that I loved but which left little time for creative endeavors of a personal nature. I had been teaching at a university, working as a free-lance costume designer, running my own dressmaking business, and building a family, and I felt the creative fatigue that accompanies a full schedule. Somewhere along the line I had come to believe that I had only a finite amount of creative energy, and by pouring so much of it into my paid work, it seemed wasteful and selfish to spend whatever was left over on my own endeavors. I felt the pull of exploring my world through creative work, but denied myself the opportunity, feeling it would serve no one but myself.
There were also big-picture questions that nagged at me, but the pace of my schedule left insufficient time to engage them in a meaningful way. I had been feeling the shift in live performance that all of us in the industry worry about: what is the future of live performance in a world with increasing income disparity and shrinking public funding? How do we engage audiences in a way that is powerful, meaningful, and relevant to them in an accessible way?
In addition, I had a gnawing urge to challenge the ways in which we use materials and people in the performance world. In the theater world, each production is built and then scrapped at the end of a run that can be anywhere from a week to a few months in duration. This huge waste of materials points to a pressing need to find creative solutions, especially in the face of the ongoing climate disruption. These are typical concerns on the issue of environmental sustainability, but less acknowledged but equally pressing is the question of sustainable human labor.
There is an expectation that you love your work as a performance artist and you would be willing to give all of yourself for the work. This includes working for very low wages, accepting job instability, and working above and beyond during the unpaid preparation hours. This very often leads to burn-out and resentment, further endangering the future of performance. The impact of these practices is monumental and conflicts with the stories of human existence we tell on the stage.
A year ago I accepted an assistant professor position halfway across the country from my home of more than ten years, and a window of opportunity opened to shift my priorities. My hope was that this would provide me with the chance to explore my big-picture questions while also fostering my family and work life in a richer way. I felt like the cliché of a young person remaking themselves as they started at a new school, and the comparison is perhaps more apt than I’d like to admit.
Coinciding perfectly with this transition, I was selected to attend a novel and intriguing event in July 2019, an “Opera Hack.” Opera America awarded a grant to San Diego Opera to organize a group of contributors who would brainstorm some of the challenges performance production is facing in the US and collaborate on possible solutions. This event mixed the structure of a hack-a-thon event, popular among large technology companies looking to find innovation, with the collaborative, artistic structure of live performance. In most hack events, teams are formed before they arrive and compete aggressively to win prize money. The Opera hack, on the other hand, was structured to allow fluid idea generation. All participants were encouraged to contribute to as many groups as we liked, and final teams were only decided when the project application was submitted.
This event spoke directly to the questions I had been turning over in my mind. There had been some early success tied to technological innovations in performance. For example, projections had been expertly used in touring productions of musicals in order to reduce the number of set pieces traveling the country, thus reducing carbon footprint as a by-product. Could similar solutions be found for other facets of sustainability? The Opera Hack was a chance to have this long-overdue conversation.
I arrived in sunny San Diego uncertain what to expect or how I might contribute as a costume designer, but eagerly anticipating having the space and opportunity to engage with others. Contributors at the Opera Hack ranged from performers, composers, administrators, conductors, and designers to leaders in technological innovation like machine learning, cutting edge sound engineering, and virtual reality. It was humbling to be in the room alongside giants in our field and key players in leading technological innovation. I talked with people about how to engage communities in the arts, both physically and emotionally, and ideas ranged from virtualization of spaces using virtual reality headsets, to kiosk-style experiences, to accessibility accommodations. We talked about the experiences of the skilled labor force who make live performances possible, brainstormed ideas about how to streamline communication, and how to sync up the live orchestra with the cue system for lights and projections.
My heart and mind were full as my dear friend from graduate school and I walked with some new friends down by La Jolla cove, watching the seals and sea lions. The potential to innovate both in the business model with an eye to new solutions, as well as in the creative sense by being open to new approaches and embracing community felt more realistic and achievable than ever.
FROM CONCEPT TO PRACTICE
Not long after returning home, I was invited to apply for a gallery show at a local church, entitled “Art as Worship.” The simplicity and openness of the prompt, “Justice,” meant that I had the opportunity to determine the boundaries of my creative work for the first time in a long time. I finally had the chance to develop some artistic techniques that I had been thinking about for some time, but hadn’t had a chance to explore as they didn’t fit into any of my professional projects. Inspired by my experience at the Opera Hack, I invited some of the big-picture questions I had been concerned with into my work by framing them through the “justice” prompt.
My piece was inspired by Pojagi, which is a form of Korean quilting that incorporates cleanly joined squares and rectangles made of translucent fabrics. I had been attracted to the artform immediately upon learning of it, because I love the sense of order and precision coupled with delicate transparency.
As I contemplated what “justice” could mean in terms of an artistic project, I found that I wanted to explore the imperfect complexity inherent in human justice systems and juxtapose it with the ideal image we have of how justice should work. There’s a draw towards duality, of guilt or innocence, but the reality is always so much more tangled than this simplistic model allows. To express this thought I mixed a variety of translucent and opaque materials like silk organza, cotton lace, and a subtle brocade that I sourced from my scrap pile, to make use of what was already present. Each fabric behaves according to its own properties and begins to interact with other materials at the seams, showing the stress of conflicting ideas and accounts. I considered the formal justice system in our country, but also contemplated what justice looks like to those who bear the brunt of our unsustainable choices.
I wove in ideas about needlecraft, specifically hand-worked stitches used for mending, which had been on my mind as I explored ways to add clothing endurance to my sustainability toolkit. The needlework provided an opportunity to express the passage of time or the arc of a human story through systems of justice and injustice. The stitches start strong and sure, mending and marrying two opposing materials. Then they begin to wander along the piece, exhibiting uncertainty, sometimes trailing off, sometimes knotting themselves hopelessly or giving up and dangling off the surface.
Stitching in deep red on a largely white surface allowed each journey to be traced by the viewer. This process reminded me of how much I learn about myself and the world through the hands-on work of creating something and bringing it from a swirl of ideas into the physical world to interact with viewers and engage them.
On a rainy night in January, I found myself standing in the hallway of the Texas church, now transformed into an art gallery. Items hung on the walls or were set on pedestals, carefully lit by track lighting and lovingly labeled with each artist’s name and intention. The range of artwork was dizzying and inspiring. I stood in front of my own piece of textile art, and the world seemed to slip away. It felt surreal to see something I had made on display, looking exalted but also so vulnerable. Though I am a professional artist, my forum is in live performance and I felt a strange mix of insecurity and fulfillment at having contributed to this exhibit.
By breaking up my well-worn creative process and accepting the invitation to play in a new venue, I had found what I had been longing for: a way to engage with big-picture questions that had been occupying my mind for so long. As a surprising byproduct, I found that instead of feeling drained from the effort of putting my creative energy into this project, quite the opposite had happened: I felt my creative energy renewed. I have resolved to take the next chance that presents itself to create something outside of my box, to use those moments of contemplation that come with physically crafting a piece of art to invite innovation, engage with questions of sustainable practice and renew my own creative spirit.
Sarah Mosher (www.sarahmosher.com) is a design artist interested in storytelling, community building, and sustainability. She is an Assistant Professor of Costume Design and Technology at Baylor University.
