What Is Creativity in 2024?

Repainting old summer sign

After not being ‘physically’ creative with my hands for what seems like eons, I am cleaning and clearing space in my “studio” aka Office.  The computer has been relegated to a desk on the side and now access to tools, supplies, equipment and work space for ART is in the forefront.  Let’s see if that continues to help with the creative process. Art now needs to be important as the world is in chaos. We need things from within to give us strength and purpose. I have packed up most of my programming clients and am making the helping of my family as easy as possible as well as paring down long held objects and beliefs.  Making room as we so often do at the beginning of a new year or a new era.

AI generated landscape

So I’ve been looking around the “arts and crafts” world these days on YouTube, Pinterest, Tic Toc, blogs, art galleries, magazines, and talking with fellow artists/friends. Then we have technological ideas and programs, mostly AI, over running the web with images. I am also just thinking about ART itself.  Is anyone really making anything or are we copying everything we see.  You can get or make up anything without so much as lifting a finger… ok a push of a few buttons on the keyboard and voila you have “created” something new.  But what is it really doing to human creativity and the physical creation of objects these days.  Hey if you go to Dollar Tree (no offense I like Dollar Tree) and get some bauble and use that glue gun (have one of those too) am I considered artist, a crafter, a plagiarist, a hobbyist, what? Am I using my creativity, passing time, getting something done to put in “my decor”? Really makes us think about what creativity really is about. Is it something we as humans using our creator talents… haven’t seen most other mammals creating things (ok yes that elephant paints images in Indonesia and yes that crow pecks holes in a pattern on a board) but that is NOT exactly what I am getting at. I think I started asking these questions when programs like photoshop and copy machines were being using to produces artwork. Now can we tell the difference if an AI program painted Van Gogh’s Starry Night or the actual painting. Does it make a difference? Is the AI work just as “valid” as Van Gogh’s? Is human input required? Does a printmaker who has his apprentices print off his original plates the actual artist of the pulled print anymore?

Studio being cleaned up

Maybe we need to ask the “value” question as well. Can we use the word valid interchangeably with value?  Is it the number or available works that makes anything more valid/valuable than another?  Kind of like Bitcoin supposedly has only so many units…. There is only one original Van Gogh is it worth more? Does it make it more valid? Does creativity done once make what you do more valid or valuable?  How do we determine if everything we create is valid in a value based sense?

Ok just going down rabbit holes on thoughts about art and making/creating works.  Somehow the philosophical always seeps in.  Now lets see if I can get my hands working with my head and in-sync with my spirit. I’m smiling as I approach the table in the room.