From the desk of Artistic Amanda…

This past weekend, my city was hit with 16″ of rain, flooding our streets and stealing homes, businesses and livelihoods. The following article was written by my friend, Patten Fuqua and featured on Section303.com, a Nashville Predators hockey blog. I couldn’t have expressed it better myself:

What I am about to write has absolutely nothing to do with hockey.

If you live outside of Nashville, you may not be aware, but our city was hit by a 500-year flood over the last few days. The national news coverage gave us 15 minutes, but went back to focusing on a failed car bomb and an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While both are clearly important stories, was that any reason to ignore our story? It may not be as terror-sexy as a failed car bomb or as eco-sexy as an oil spill, but that’s no reason to be ignored.

The Cumberland River crested at its highest level in over 80 years. Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. People drowned. Billions of dollars in damage occurred. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the Civil War. And yet…no one knows about it.

Does it really matter? Eventually, it will…as I mentioned, there are billions of dollars in damage. It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite possibly the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Some will be quick to find fault in the way rescue operations were handled, but the fact of the matter is that the catastrophe could not have been prevented and it is simply ignorant beyond all reason to suggest otherwise. It is a flood. It was caused by rain. You can try to find a face to stick this tragedy to, but you’ll be wrong.

Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.

And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.

Because we are Nashville.

As an artist and citizen of Nashville, my heart beats for this community. In addition to donating my time and resources to clean-up efforts, I wanted to do something to document this event as well as give back. Patten and I partnered with other members of the community and created this t-shirt design. Proceeds will benefit the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. For more updates, please visit the We Are Nashville Facebook page.

“Access encourages use. Make a practice of keeping art supplies within easy reach. Play by yourself, play with friends. Be silly, be serious.” -Jim Krause

flickr credit: lindsay rogerson

Healthy relationships include time for recreation. Every so often, make time to play with your computer, scanner, digital camera and other fun peripherals. Some of our best learning and creative breakthroughs occur when we play with our tools. In my opinion, as designers, we need to occasionally step away from our desks and get back in touch with the simplicity of childhood craft-time. We need to sit cross-legged on the floor and create random acts of art. We need to craft things with our hands and not overthink the details or technique. Create works of art that have nothing to do with financial gain. LIGHTEN UP – success and failure are irrelevant during playtime.

I wanted to get away from computer generated art today and take a look at some of the best creative use project tutorials I’ve found. Enjoy!

• Upcycled Photo Cube by Design Mom
• Coffee Sack Bulletin Board by Jackie Hernandez
• Milk Carton CD Case by Upcycle Art
• Soda Bottle Lamps by Upcycle Art
• Junk Mail Christmas Ornaments by Junk Mail Gems
• Gift Bags by Junk Mail Gems
• 5 Reuses for License Plates by Daily DiY

Click below to get the scoop from this Kansas City creative team on how they developed an interesting concept in branding a new burger chain with style and personality. (via HOW’s June 2009 issue)

A few of my past blogs have contained excerpts from Caffeine for the Creative Mind by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield. I’m a huge fan of this book as it delivers on its promise of waking up your brain and training you to think outside the box – something we, as designers, should include as part of our daily creative maintenance.

Now the caffeinated duo has done it again with their book Caffeine for the Creative Team: 200 Exercises to Energize Your Next Brainstorm. And thanks to HOW Design, they have made it easy to jolt the creativity of your next brainstorming session with these downloadable cards… enjoy!

35 Beautiful Examples Of ‘Urban Decay Photography’ via Smashing Magazine.

Happy Easter from ArtisticAmanda.com! Consider this your virtual easter basket filled with lots of Photoshop goodies!

My 3-day trip to the Lowcountry can be summed up by blue skies, good eats, and an outsider’s view on the inside art scene. Charleston art: the city breathes it. Inspiration can be found everywhere – from the brilliant colors of Rainbow Row to the delicate presentation of a 3-course Prix Fixe meal at McCrady’s. As a visual artist and graphic designer though, what really caught my eye was the ornate wrought iron gate-work proudly displayed on the faces of homes & offices alike.

The oldest remaining ironwork in the city dates to the Revolutionary War period, although ironwork balconies appeared on Charleston houses as early as 1739. This early iron is wrought iron; iron which has been molded and pounded into shape by a blacksmith using a forge, anvil and hammer. Wrought ironwork of the 18th and 19th centuries features scrolls, fleur-de-lis, leaf and flower patterns, spears and wiggletails. Philip Simmons, Charleston’s best known blacksmith, has continued this time-honored craft and has created some of the city’s most treasured pieces.

“My musical instrument is an anvil. I guess some of you have heard me play…a tune on the anvil, the old blacksmith tune…I’m proud of that anvil, really proud…It’s very dear to my heart…That anvil fed me when I was hungry and that anvil clothed me when I was naked. That anvil put shoes on my feet.” – Philip Simmons

With the Carolina city so rich in color, culture and creativity, it’s no wonder Charleston is becoming a hot spot for artists of every medium, including culinary masterminds and fashion moguls.

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Elements: Blue vs. Red. (Amanda Wyler, 2008)

Blue inspires creativity, red boosts attention to detail
Updated Fri. Feb. 6 2009 12:17 PM ET
The Canadian Press
Source: CTV.ca

TORONTO — We all have our colour preferences, but two Canadian researchers argue all colours are not of the same value.

The colour blue inspires creativity while the colour red improves attention to detail, they report in a study published online Thursday by the journal Science.

Ravi Mehta and Rui Zhu of the University of British Columbia say their conclusions could have a wide range of implications for daily life, from the use of colour in educational settings to its use on street signs or warning labels.

The scientists undertook the 18-month study to resolve conflicting theories on the effects of red and blue on people’s performance, Zhu told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview.

“Some people had found that red colour will enhance performance (more) than blue and others had found exactly the opposite.”

Mehta and Zhu tested people with a variety of mental tasks performed on computers, including solving anagrams and memorizing lists of words. The tasks took place in front of either a blue, red, or neutral background.

“The things that come to people’s mind when they think about red colour is stop sign, red light, blood, ambulance and emergency,” Zhu said.

Those images trigger an avoidance motivation and when people are in what Zhu called an “avoidance mindset,” they’re likely to be vigilant and careful.

But the researchers found blue to be entirely different.

Zhu said the most salient association people link to blue is ocean and sky. That means open, free and peaceful, and if the environment is safe people are more likely to use exploratory strategies in their decision making, she said.

The researchers said different colours may be used to enhance cognitive performance in a number of ways.

My office is currently a mustard yellow. I think it’s time to repaint.

There are some days when I can’t keep up with my own ideas. I get excited about one, begin to focus on a project and seem to have 1000 or more in the process. Of course, then there are the OTHER days. The dreaded days when the creative well appears to have dried up and nothing I create strikes me as impressive or innovative. That’s when I wish inspiration could be tapped into like On-Demand television. You could see all your options at once… and even be able to DVR some creativity for your 2:30pm meeting when you know your caffeine buzz will reach it’s breaking point. While we don’t have Inspiration On-Demand, what we do have is the internet where we can access portfolios, creative journals, magazines, color swatches, patterns… anything we want! A powerful source of creative energy can be accessed by examining the work of others.

There are pitfalls, however. Reviewing the styles and solutions that other artists have discovered before you’ve had a chance to sketch out a page or two of your own ideas can short-circuit your creative process and narrow the search to directions that have already been explored. On the other hand, ignoring the work of others completely can lead to ideas that are out-of-step or below the bar that has been set by other artists.

Here are 10 of my favorite inspiration-generators:

COLOURlovers: A color and design community for creative inspiration and sharing the love of color. (Patterns, too!)

LogoPond: A community gallery of logo designs. All the logo inspiration you’ll ever need.

DeviantART: An online art community showcasing everything from graphic design and sketches to sculptures, photography and paintings.

The Best Designs: The best Flash and CSS Web Design.

Faveup: Part of Eden Creative Communities out of Sydney, Australia, Faveup is a gallery of inspirational design that allows you to vote for your favorites.

Smashing Magazine: = L O V E. Tutorials, freebies, articles… “We smash you with information that will make your life easier. Really.” True story.

Flickr: Photos, photos, photos. Mostly, I like to explore interesting photos over the last 7 days and wait for something to strike me.

HOW Magazine: A wealth of information including articles, books, competitions, and forums where you can discuss design topics and get peer critiques.

Caffeine for the Creative Mind: For any creative type who wants to quickly limber up their imagination on a daily basis.

Design Essentials Index: Includes the Design Basics Index, the Type Idea Index and the Color Index 2 to give idea-hungry designers a wealth of practical design info at their fingertips.

Where do you get your inspiration for new ideas? When do you tap into it and how? Is it time to try a new approach?