Saturday, October 9, 2010

Stone Soup for the Creative Soul



         This past Tuesday was a day for Stone Soup! What used to be a folk tale laid in my hands as a group challenge to transform a melting pot of materials into a whole. My group and I set out to nature and became inspired not by our individual materials, but by our natural surroundings. We each laid out our materials on the grass. Looking around, every item looked random and diverse. We all immediately got out our sketchbooks and each came up with some ideas for our intended creation. Little did we know that our minds would all gravitate towards a tree as the centerpiece.
            So we all became stimulated and inspired by this tree and in turn gathered our materials and ran with our concepts.  It was interesting to note that the ideas formed from the start of the challenge changed to be totally different in the end. In the end, we merged our ideas into the electricity of a tree. How there is so much energy and creativity in the structure and underneath the bark. This stone soup challenge tested our abilities to work as a team while staying true to our individual designers’ at heart. I believe we succeeded in creating a solid concept in addition to using each and everyone’s ideas combined to one ephemeral piece of art.
            Stone soup to me, started as a challenge, but ended as inspiration. It wasn’t the end, but the process. It was the little bit of unintentional spark within the process that created a design, an innovative indulgence.  I believe the ideas behind “stone soup” can give any designer that extra muse. Since it is so important to observe design from all different angles, obtaining inspiration from outside one’s mind can unlock new forms of creativity. And like the saying goes, “Two minds are greater then one.” 

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