Can a creative life be for everyone?

Leading a creative life is not always the easiest thing to do. Sure, many makers and artists will tell you that it brings them joy, while there are those who will downplay any difficulty it requires—Hey, it’s not rocket science! We’re not curing cancer! While we don’t take for granted the delight and joy that creativity brings, it also demands from us to focus and pay attention to one’s true self and to the world as it is. Doing this can also overwhelm and even cause grief, despair, or anger. What do you do when you’ve reached this point in your creative journey? What if you’re just starting or want to restart all over? What if you’re not even sure if you can even be creative? These three books from the Mess Studio community library at the Atrium Common Room branch, show us an expansive take on creativity and provide a guide and inspiration to keep creating.

The Artist's Way

Authors: Julia Cameron with Mark Bryan

Filmmaking legend Martin Scorsese has called this book “a valuable tool to get in touch with [one’s] own creativity.” Published in 1992, The Artist’s Way aims to empower both aspiring and working artists to recover their creativity from all too familiar creative blocks. (We know them well—fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, the list goes on.)

It starts on the basic principles, which includes that “creative expression is the natural direction of life.” As such, if you’ve steered away from it, the 12-week program (divided into 12 chapters), serves almost like a spiritual guide with techniques and exercises. The process, the authors warn, can involve a lot of emotional tumult, we’re taking buried dreams and “mourning the self we abandoned.” But hope is not lost. This book, which leans heavily on the spiritual, remains influential, because it offers a path to rediscovering and nurturing your inner artist.

(Since this is a library book, if you don’t find a copy of your own to help you do all 12 chapters of the program, at the very least, its “morning pages” journaling practice is a good takeaway. Morning pages is writing three stream-of-consciousness pages at the start of every day with the goal of draining your brain of the mundane and the noise  to help make space for more creativity.)

The Creative Art: A Way of Being

Author: Rick Rubin

It’s one of those books every artist and writer ought to have in their shelves, like the bestselling Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and classic The Artist’s Way. It offers a more open view on creativity—that’s it’s not just about making art and it’s not just for those who work as artists and makers—it’s for everyone. Rick Rubin then goes on to present that creativity is more of a mindset, a way to approach life with awareness, curiosity, and, and the willingness to try.

He delves into both the practical aspects of the creative process (eg. gathering and refining ideas) to the spiritual, with chapters on transcending self-imposed expectations and reconnecting with our innocent childlike wonder. The book is filled with relatable and a-ha moments, ideas and quotes you might eagerly scribble in your notebook or Notes app because they ring true and it’s what you needed to realize. Even the previous owner of this library copy has highlighted some of them and made her own notes on the margins 🧡 (Personally, I would love to have this book within reach whenever I feel discouraged or depleted of creative energy.)

Made by Hand

Editor: Nick Warner

With handmade growing more in popularity in the past decade, the book highlights contemporary makers who preserve and practice different traditional craftsmanship. From cobbling to bag making, textile making to tailoring, the book profiles different highly skilled makers who continue to make and champion handmade when mass-produced is more the norm.

Though the makers are mostly from Europe and the US (with the exception of a Japanese family that makes traditional handmade washi paper and an Indonesian designer that makes eco-friendly wooden gadgets), the profiles still offer insight into their hand making techniques, the traditional practices of their craft, and their respective motivations. Should you need some inspiration to keep doing handmade (or finally take it up), it’s always nice to see how others have done it.

Drop by the Mess Studio community library and book shop for more titles on art, culture, creativity, and crafts.