1. How do you define “spirituality”?

In my opinion, spirituality is something we can’t see or touch but born in person and grows along with person. Spirituality is essential and vital to all human beings, because it connects to the consciousness and it is the core that leads people to find the inner self. I think everyone has spirituality and it is different from each one, even though sometimes people didn’t realize the spirituality but it does exists in person. I believe that spirituality affects deeply on how people act and think, and the way it exists is subconscious.

2. Does spirituality differ from religion?

I think spirituality does differ from religion. First of all, I believe that the spirituality born in person, but religion doesn’t. Secondly, spirituality is something people own it in various ways, just like no two fingerprints are the same; no two spiritualties are the same. However, they are some certain types of religions that exist in the world. Finally, from my own experiences and knowledge, I think one’s spirituality is not really connects to God while religion does, even though there are several different names of God.

3. How do you define “creativity”?

I think creativity is kind of ability that everyone has it, but the different levels of development of creativity between people depends on one’s knowledge and related amount of information. In my opinion, one’s creativity can be growed and practiced, and people can use creativity to turn a more abstract concept into concrete. And creativity is always connecting to inspiration, and spirituality plays a vital role here. I think spirituality and creativity supplement each other by providing positive information.

4.What is the source of creativity?

I believe there are many sources of creativity today, and I would like to summarize them by using a more simplified way. So I think the most important source of creativity is gift or talent. I have to admit that the great artists in the long art history were very talented, even though they had work hard and were very knowledgeable. And the other source is knowledge and the ability to use knowledge. Finally, I think it is important to people to be critical.

I do think this week’s reading helped me with understanding myself as an art student better, because it answered some essential and vital questions that made me struggling for a longtime. By reading the article The Mission of Art, I learned that there are many stages in the creative process that found by scientists, and the author Grey, A in his article trying to summarize the process as “Formulation, saturation, incubation, inspiration, translation, and integration.” (P.75) I think the way he summarized is interesting and I believe the most important stage for an artist in the creative process is inspiration.

In my opinion, when talking about one’s creativity, the most important part relates to it is the inspiration. In another word, inspiration sometimes determines one’s creativity in some way. As Grey said, “Every artist has his or her own unique process of inspiration.” (P.80) I totally agree his idea because from my own experience, I can tell that the way how I get ideas or inspiration is sometimes different from my classmates. For example, when I took the ceramic class I did not like to sketch and I always had no plan for my artworks. So I just followed my heart to do it, and the ideas and inspirations just came along with the progress when I built up my artwork. However, one of my friend really enjoyed doing sketches and she always plans ahead of what she’s going to build.

So I think inspiration is such an amazing process that its influences to artists is great. As Grey mentioned in his article, “Inspiration is beyond reason. (P.82)” and also “Inspiration is the most mysterious step in the creative process. The artist is possessed by a creative force, overtaken by a vision and driven to create.” (P.81). For me the saddest part of why inspiration is so important is that I can never make inspiration, but only can grab it when it comes.