So you think you have no time to make art. It used to be my number one complaint, “No time, no art,” until I learned about Nina Katchadourian. Frustrated by time wasted by frequent flying Nina Katchadourian came up with an idea before a flight in 2010, that made all her subsequent flights her studio.

Determined to maximize her time on the plane and remain engaged during what is often a numbing experience, New York-based multidisciplinary artist Nina Katchadourian developed a kind of game to create things throughout the entire flight that became known as project “Seat Assignment.”

As an artist, I’m always looking at what more there might be in our mundane, everyday surroundings if we pay it interest, give it a second look.

I hadn’t brought materials with me, so I began playing with whatever was at hand on my tray table, and documented the results with my camera phone.

In an interview with Astry

Seat Assignment has been displayed at art museums, and the collection continues to grow. The project was born from thinking on the feet, from optimism about the artistic potential that lurks within the mundane, and from curiosity about the productive tension between freedom and constraint.

What makes the project works is unexpectedness. Each time you wonder how did she do it. She intentionally uses a mobile phone. “Once you pull out a real camera,” she says, “it screams, I am making art!” In two hundred flights since 2010, only three people asked her what she was up to.

She was flying from New York to New Zealand when she thought, I have twenty hours ahead of me, why not do the whole exhibition based on this flight and she did. It’s worth reading her interview on Berlin Art Link.

Inspired I had a go in my kitchen:

While researching her I found another interesting project by her where she attempts to profile a person based on his/her book collection by selecting and arranging books in stacks based on titles. Have a look at this video:

It goes like this:

1. Choose a person you know or would like to know better

2. Take a look at/through their library

3. Make 3 stacks of books to develop a portrait of the person

And here are some examples:

This is a project for me for another day. Do write to me to let me know what you think of Nina’s projects.

Yesterday, in my post how to be an artist, I talked about being a “scenius” rather than a genius. “Scenius is a term invented by an English musician, record producer, and visual artist Brian Eno. Another word for “scenius” is “communal genius.” The word conveys the extreme creativity that a group, place or “scene” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is:

“Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of genius.

Individuals immersed in a productive “scenius” blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like a genius. Your like-minded peers and the entire environment inspire you.” – Brian Eno

Today I am going to introduce to you such a “scenius,” a group started by an ordinary man, on a single idea, working part-time which now has become a community of thousands even when the term “scenius” was not even invented.

His name is Darren Rowse and he is a blogger, speaker, consultant and founder of several blogs and blog networks, including b5media, ProBlogger and digital photography school.

His two main blogs Digital Photography School, which features photography tips, and ProBlogger, which features tips on blogging, get around 85,000–100,000 page views a day and over $20,000 in total ad revenue a month. Rowse was named in the Forbes Web Celebrity List in 2007.

In 2008, Rowse co-authored the book ‘ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income’ (Wiley) and founded TwiTip—a blog dedicated to Twitter tips. Rowse is co-founder of the Third Tribe and founder of the Problogger Paid community.

In May 2009, ProBlogger was listed as number two on Technorati‘s most favorite blogs and number 40 on the most linked blog.

Why is Darren Rowse so important?

Because he saw a need in the early days of blogging and tried to fill it with a simple blog. A blog on how to blog. His story is remarkable. He writes:

“Back in November of 2002 when I first hit ‘publish’ on my original (and short-lived) Blogspot Blog I did so believing that this ‘blogging thing’, which I’d only just heard of, would be a bit of fun. I started for a number of reasons but in short, it was curiosity and the hope of a new hobby and perhaps some new connections that drew me to it. At the time I was working three jobs.” – Darren in PROBLOGGER

Blogging for a long time was a hobby for Darren and a way to connect with others. His blog was quite popular in his church circles at that time but hosting and ISP costs were starting to escalate. He needed to make money from his blog.

After about a year of blogging, he accidentally started Digital Photography Blog and discovered AdSense and the Amazon Affiliate program. He quickly realized that his hopes to pay for his ISP and hosting costs and perhaps a professionally designed blog can come true. This was not because he had put AdSense on any blog but because by then he had several thousand readers per day.

Blogging was still a hobby for Darren but he has started spending two days on it. It was, in fact, more than two days because he worked late every night to keep things moving. He started doing more than one post per day for his Digital Photography Blog. His work paid off because in May 2004 his earnings hit $32 per day and by the end of June 2004 he’d broken $1000 in a month for the first time and was bringing in $48 per day. He is now making a seven-figure income from his blogs, networks, and courses.

It is important to know at this time Darren was not working as a genius, he was a “scenius.” He knew nothing about digital photography or blogging. He was learning and teaching at the same time. He happened to be at a “scene” where both digital photography and blogging were new, Darren hooked in with the early learners and shared what he learned with his readers. That created a community. A “scenius.”

He was a node in a network where he was relaying while contributing at the same time. His readers were nodes too, relaying and contributing at the same time.

Austin Kleon puts it in very simple terms: Genius is an egosystem, scenius is an ecosystem.

That is the message I want to give with this post. Not everybody can be a genius but everyone can be a “scenius.”

I took Darren’s 31 Days to a Better Blog course when I first started blogging in August and became a part of his “scenius.” There are other “scenius” I am part of from where I learn and contribute.

Are you a part of a “scenius”? Tell me about it.

Top Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

In the past two days, I introduced you to two people who profoundly impacted me by changing my perception of what art is, and we all could be artists. Today I will introduce you to the third person who gave me actual know-how of being an artist.

If you have been reading my previous posts, he is no stranger. His name is Austin Kleon. He has written four books and calls himself “a writer who can draw.” However, I believe his most significant achievement is that he has cracked the code of how to “be” an artist. He shares that knowledge freely through his blog and his books. I have picked three of his insights that have impacted me the most to share with you.

1. Art is theft

Austin came to fame with his second book, How to Steal Like an Artist, in which he shared all the knowledge he gained about becoming an artist. He demonstrates how you could do it through the book. The whole book is based on lessons learned from other artists. The artists who encouraged to imitate, copy, and steal so that new artists could learn. That is how they learned.

“We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that is how you will find your voice. And that is how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you.” – Francis Ford Coppola, Source: HOW TO STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST

“Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light, and shadows; select the only thing to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.” – Jim Jarmusch Source: HOW TO STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST.

The mistake the new artists make is that they think they need to make something original. The experienced artist knows that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something “original,” nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.

“Art is theft,” said Pablo Picasso.

“There is nothing new under the sun.” (Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Austin writes many people find this idea depressing, but it fills him with hope. French writer Andre Gide, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said, but since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

This is a very reassuring and novel approach to invoke creativity. It takes away the pressure of being original and making something out of nothing. As Austin says, we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.

“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” – William Ralph Inge.

But there is a caveat. You can’t copy without giving attribution; it will hurt you badly.

You can imitate to learn, as imitation is the best-known way to learn any skill.

When you steal, you have a responsibility to turn it into something better or at least different. As the famous poet T. S. Eliot puts it:

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn.” – T. S. Elliot

Show Your Work

The second most important thing you ought to know to be an artist other than to “produce good work” is to “share your work.”

It used to be very hard to share your work ten years ago or so. You have to hold exhibitions; you have to find a publisher to publish your book. But nowadays it is very easy. The Internet has provided a platform for anyone who wants to share their work.

When you open up your process and invite people in, you learn. You don’t put yourself online only because you have something to say – you can put yourself online to find something to say. The internet can be more than just a resting place to publish your finished ideas – it can also be an incubator for ideas that aren’t fully formed, a birthing center for developing work that you haven’t started yet.

Austin Kloen How to Steal Like an Artist

Have nothing to share this how you can start, suggests Austin:

“Step 1: Wonder at something. Step 2: Invite others to wonder with your. You should wonder at things nobody else is wondering about. If everybody is wondering about apples; go wonder about oranges. The more open you are about sharing your passions, the closer people will feel to your work. Artist’s aren’t magicians. There is no plenty for revealing your secrets.

Be a Scenius

Most of the time, we think an artist is some sort of a “genius” who is born with special talents. This is a myth. This “lone genius myth” has dissuaded my promising artists from realizing their full potential.

If you believe in the lone genius myth, creativity is an antisocial act, performed by a few great figures – mostly dead men with names like Mozart, Einstein, or Picasso. The rest of us are left to stand around and gawk in awe at their achievements.

Austin Kleon Show Your Work

Austin introduces a healthier way of thinking about creativity, referred to by musician Brian Eno as “scenius.” A scenius is a group of creative individuals – artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers – who make up an “ecology of talent” – who generate and nurture great ideas.

According to Austin, If we look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.”

Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals; it just acknowledges that the good work isn’t created in a vacuum and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.

“What is great about the idea of scenius,” writes Austin, “is that it makes room in the story of creativity for the rest of us: the people who don’t consider ourselves geniuses. It is not about how talented and how smart you are it is about what you have to contribute, the idea you can share, the quality of connections you can make, and conversations you start.”

If we can forget about the geniuses and concentrate on how we can nurture and contribute to a scenius we can lean and grow much faster. Internet is basically is a bunch of seniuses. Blogs, social media sites, email groups and discussion board forums are the platforms where people hang out and talk about things they care about and share ideas.

Needless to say, I am implementing many of Austin Kleon’s suggestions.

He has many more insights in his books How to Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going. Read them and listen to his talks on YouTube and TED talks.

Tomorrow I will introduce you to one such scenius that has helped me a great deal in starting this blog.