Sunrise in a Petal

Chinese Tulip

      Last week I saw a wonderful documentary film, about the life of the legendary American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In it he says something to the affect of:

When you spend time in nature, it charges you with energy. If this energy is used to “create”, then the products that come out of it, will be more beautiful than heaven itself.

      He was a lover of nature and used this energy to create great architecture and went on to become a world famous architect. The houses he designed seemed to belong to the land they were built on. They were in total harmony with nature. My favorite is Falling Water. The interiors of most of  the houses he designed are rich in detail with hard wood. The walls are painted with earthy colors.  An office building that he designed has columns shaped like lily pads, that are nature inspired!

      While I was still savoring the creative genius  of Frank Lloyd Wright in my mind, an interesting article appeared in the New York Times on Creativity. It is titled, Charting Creativity: Signposts Of a Hazy Territory. Well since this blog is about creativity in different mediums, I thought of jotting down a few points from this article here and share them with you:

• … a common definition of creativity: the ability to combine novelty and usefulness in a particular social context.
•   Dr. Kounios, who studies the neural basis of insight, defines creativity as the ability to restructure one’s understanding of a situation in a nonobvious way.
• …  creativity prefers to take a slower, more meandering path than intelligence…. but in the regions of the brain related to creativity, there appears to be lots of little side roads with interesting detours, and meandering little byways.
• “Creativity is a collection of different processes that work in different areas of the brain,” Dr. Kounios said.
• …  creativity not only involves coming up with something new, but also with shutting down the brain’s habitual response, or letting go of conventional solutions.
• … creative connections often occur when people are most peaceful — relaxing under a tree, like Isaac Newton, or in a dream state, like Coleridge when he thought up “Kubla Khan.”
• It seems that to be creative is to be something we don’t have a test for.

      I am in total agreement of this article. Some of my most creative thoughts germinate, when I am outdoors in the midst of nature. There is something about the clean, oxygen enriched air outdoors that relaxes the brain and makes you think differently and hence creatively. Here are two posts from this blog, that make this case clear. A concept for a stadium design found in a raw Sunflower bud. The inspiration to design women’s party clothes based on the form of Fuchsia.

      With all this knowledge about Mr.Wright and creativity, I went out for a walk in the backyard yesterday and found a  flower on the grass. It belongs to the Chinese Tulip tree.  On close examination it revealed sunrise in a petal .  To find sunrise in a petal is surely more beautiful than heaven. Am I right, Mr.Wright?

Ratna

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