Random Acts of Creativity
Susie Risho is a professional artist who works in a wide array of mediums including: oil and acrylic painting, clay and concrete sculpture, collage, book making & illustrating, poetry and gardening. She currently serves as president of The Art Associates of Missoula, an organization promoting the arts for children. She is the executive director of StoryKeepers, and has taught in private schools, the Flagship and museum programs for children in Missoula since 1980. She and her husband Ray received the Cultural Achievement Award from the Missoula Cultural Council in 2008.Artist and educator Susie Risho moderates this discussion about the creativity we encounter in our everyday lives.
What "random acts of creativity" have you encountered in your community and elsewhere across the state? What do these creative gestures mean to you? What is the function and value and importance of a community's creative spirit? Please share your thoughts!
Tags: Montana, art theory and criticism, odds and ends
Views: 110
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Susie Risho on -
Welcome everyone!
We are all participants of the arts as we look around us every day. Consider the art and creativity that you see around you—especially in unexpected places. Tell us what you find outstanding, curious, weird or wonderful (and share photos if you have them!). We'll use your examples as the basis for discussing the value and significance of artistry in our everyday lives.
- Susie
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Permalink Reply by Jason Neal on -
This isn't terribly random, but I do like it. It's Jay Laber's found-objects sculpture "Charging Forward" on Campus Drive at UM.
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Permalink Reply by elizabeth orvis on -
I love this sculpture. I don't like where they put it though.
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Permalink Reply by Jason Neal on
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Agreed. It really needs to be somewhere on the grassy part of campus, with some trees or bushes around....
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Permalink Reply by Jason Neal on
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I suppose you don't have to stick an old car up on a pole and put a mannequin in the driver's seat in order to advertise your salvage yard...but why on earth wouldn't you?
This is on the east side of Hwy 93, just as you're coming into Arlee from the south.
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Permalink Reply by Ednor Therriault on -
I will pull over every time for a car on a pole. There's an exquisitely restored vintage beauty, unknown make, on a pole near the highway in Libby. It's kind of on its own, not near a business, with no sign or identifying info.
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Permalink Reply by Jason Neal on
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That makes my car-on-a-pole look like some sort of amateur hack job. I don't see signs of birds nesting in the wheel wells or anything. Sweet!
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Permalink Reply by Ednor Therriault on
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Every time I drive past the Kelly's car in Arlee I can't help but think about that scene in the movie 'Used Cars' where they put Luke Fuch's body in the car-on-a-pole. One of the best comedies ever.
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Permalink Reply by Kim Anderson on -
William Rossiter, one of our longest serving speakers on the HM Speakers Bureau, sent this photo from a recent trip through a large swath of Eastern Montana. The most creative bumper guards ever!
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Permalink Reply by Ednor Therriault on
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That is brilliantly twisted! Or is it twistedly brilliant?
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Permalink Reply by elizabeth orvis on
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HA !
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Permalink Reply by Jason Neal on
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Over the last twenty years many small cities (small as in 50,000 - 100,000+ residents) have seen the rapid development of "big-box store" shopping districts, like the one on N. Reserve Street in Missoula. They're kind of an easy Target® (hey! see what I did there!), given all the generally bad press about the economic impact these areas have on locally owned retailers. (They're also frequently mentioned in articles about fast-food consumption and the obesity epidemic in America, because wherever there are box stores there are, invariably, fast-food joints.)
But the thing that drives me nuts about these districts (which I do frequent, although I tend to skip the french fries) is that they are utterly devoid of any creative gesture or idiosyncrasy. The stores, inside and out, are not just utilitarian, but severely utilitarian. Even the grassy patches and manicured hedges around the parking lots seem somehow sterile.
It makes me appreciate all the more the sheer aesthetic experience of downtown Missoula, where there is evidence of human thoughtfulness and skillfulness and whimsy and spirit at every turn. And I think a lot of towns have that in their older, original retail districts—even ones that aren't really thriving anymore. And it's not just the grand gestures like outdoor sculptures, commissioned murals, etc. For me, it's the little things—an oddly painted storefront, the little flourishes in a building's brickwork—that best serve to reflect the humanity in the places we (less and less commonly) work and shop and socialize.
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