This article was intriguing but also inspiring, it gave me new ideas to ponder. Thorpe refers to “scratching” as digging through ideas, isn’t this the same thing as brainstorming. Don’t artists use their sketchbooks as a form of preliminary scratching and planning? I know I do! Mozart became inspired by listening to birds while he was inventing musical motifs- aren’t musicians scratching in similar ways as artists?

Thorpe claims that scratching is like improvising- she is right, “scratching can look like borrowing or appropriating which is essential to creativity”. Currently with my studio class, I am working on designing (or figuring out) a way to introduce the art of “altered books” to students. This idea is very complex and I am trying to propose the idea in a way where they are intrigued enough to “scratch” the surface for their own ideas. I am proposing that they work with the ideas of multi-media and supplied images to carry out their theme of the their chosen book. (You should see some of the titles, Moby Dick, secrets of the seas, the face of rural america )… and ease them into the idea of “borrowing” the images and appropriating ideas from the texts and titles. In a sense, we  are scratching for ideas!

Good ideas do lead to big ideas as Thorpe suggests, she refers to the process as waiting for a thunderbolt to strike! She also suggest that we should be in shape, as a practicing artist we could become rusty if not practicing. I must admit, I am feeling rusty these days. I have not truly had the time to be devoted to a work I really enjoy creating- I feel as I am rusty. I am always carrying a sketchbook however, almost like a journal, to jot down feelings, ideas, sketches, brainstorms…that all hopefully will lead mt the direction of BIG IDEAS in the classroom. 

In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature.” Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

Above- Altered Book examples- as a way to scratch and improvise ideas!