Creativity: Thinking Outside the Box
This sculpture celebrates innovative creativity. One way to achieve such creativity is sometimes referred to as thinking “outside the box.”
Most people solve problems by remembering those solutions which worked in the past. They fixate on familiar approaches until they find one that will work. Creative geniuses don’t think in this conventional way. Einstein once said that if you asked the average person to find a needle in a haystack, that person would stop when he or she found a needle. He, on the other hand, would continue examining the entire haystack looking for all possible needles. We aren’t all creative geniuses, but we can create more innovatively by not accepting the “obvious” solution.
The ribbons of this sculpture depict innovative thinking by surrounding and bypassing conventional thinking (the box). The ribbons coalesce at the top in celebration of achieving the innovative solution.
The box is made of black walnut and the ribbons are ambrosia maple. The dark stains and worm-like holes in the maple are the work of ambrosia beetles that lived in the tree while it grew.