Category Archives: Unit 07

How do you define spirituality?

For me, spirituality is a deeper understanding and coming to peace with one’s place in the world. Spirituality connects humanity, both through time and across cultures. This is why religion has such an enormous impact on our world, because people are always searching for something to unify them and give them a place of belonging. For many of us, spirituality is found in things outside of religion, but it always has to be something that can answer life’s hardest questions and connect people in need of sharing in the human experience. Art is one of those things that allow people to find meaning in life and share that meaning with other people, eliciting the kind of emotions that can only be found in that kind of other-worldly realm.

Does Spirituality differ from religion?

Yes. Religion is a venue for spirituality to be obtained but they are not the same thing. In my blog post, I called making music “a religious experience,” and I meant that in creating, I am able to connect to the world and find answers that are similar to those answers that people seek when they find religion. Of course, if someone were to make the argument that music is a religion or that types of philosophies are religions then the line is blurred a little bit. However, I tend to define religion as requiring a god and answering questions about what happens after life.

How do you define creativity?

Creativity is the ability to express oneself in a way that is novel. I tend to consider something truly creative if the product can encompass the experience of others as well. The ability to take something personal and have it resonate with multiple people is a special kind of talent. The most creative people can make the most mundane and normal life experiences feel special, much in the way Ellen Dissayunake describes as crucial to art.

What is the source of creativity?

I do believe that a great deal of creativity is inborn. People have to have some innate ability to take experience and express it, or else they will never be able to be creative. I think the people with the best potential for creativity also have a great deal of spirituality and empathy for others. It is also crucial to understand oneself, which can be a problem. Too many people are not quite in touch with their own feelings to be able to connect those feelings with other people.  Furthermore, if a person can only understand themselves and feels disconnected with the world around them, it is more difficult for them to create that type of connection. In the end, creativity comes from life and understanding everything that comes with sharing this planet with other people.

I think each of the artists in the Art:21 presentation finds a way to use a spiritual tradition and manipulate it in a way that brings about personal spirituality. When I was watching this presentation, and having read the reading, I thought about my spirituality when expressing myself through my art. The painter, Shahzia Sikander, said about her art, “the sheer act of doing it gives [her] peace” (2003). As a musician and a writer, I connected to this sentiment, because I feel like I get a religious experience out of expressing myself through my art. Each of the other artists seem to find this kind of experience in what they do as well, and the act of putting that experience into art is the “translation” portion of the creative process (Grey, 2001, 75). For some of these artists, like John Feodorov and Shahzia Sikander, their religious experience is a product of exploring a combination of religions and discovering how a meaning can be pulled out of both cultures.

But I think the main point of the video presentation is that spirituality can be found all over art. It does not necessarily have to be a product of exploring religious traditions. Art itself can act as a religion of its own, and artists can find spirituality in exploring the artistic elements of the natural world. Ann Hamilton found it in the way the thin stream of water reacted to her manipulations and James Turrell found it with light and his crater.