Ed Fraughton on Art and Creativity

The act of creativity, it's always a tough question because it begins differently at different times. Some ideas grow over many years. And in fact, one project I did called Anasazi was an idea I had when I went through Mesa Verde as a young boy scout. And it took, you know, 40 years before I got around to figuring out a way to create it in sculpture. But most ideas, I sit down, I really like to brainstorm. I enjoy that process. And what I'll often do is sit down and take a sheet of paper, and usually I can fit it all on one sheet, but I'll write all kinds of ideas. I do this for titles for pieces too, but if I'm looking for a subject, the one thing that I do that I don't think a lot of other people do is most people sit down and they'll think of something they can sell. I've never conceived an idea yet as something that I can sell. And a lot of things I've done have been quite innovative. And they sell, maybe it takes a few years before the first one sells, and then it catches on because it takes people a while sometimes to adjust. And the Anasazi project is a perfect example of that because the first year, first 13 months, we didn't sell a single one. You know, with all that work and all the investment in molds and castings and everything. So ideas, I've never put money first, the need for money before doing the idea. I made a decision many years ago. When I was really at the university, I was studying engineering, civil engineering. And I was also playing in the band. I played the baritone horn in the marching and the concert bands. I love music, and I loved engineering, building things. But when I started studying sculpture, I made a decision, and that is, what is it that I want to do with the rest of my life? And I decided, what is the one thing that I could do that would make a greater contribution to humanity than any other thing? And I thought, there are a lot of engineers around. There are a lot of musicians around, unless you're a good writer, composer, or something like that. And I thought, there's a lot of competition there. But when I looked at sculpture, I was totally fascinated. And in the beginning, it was hard to believe that anybody could do that. And it was so challenging that I wanted to learn to do it. I just felt I wanted to do sculpture. And from the time I took my first class, I said, this is it. This is what I want to do. Somebody says, I could never do that. When they watch me work, I ask them, well, how do you know? Have you ever tried? And it's kind of an embarrassing question, because most people haven't. And the sad thing is, we start out as children, and we do drawings. We scribble a little bit. We're fascinated by the fact that somebody put this little pencil or a crayon in our hand, and we move it around this paper. And wherever we go, it leaves a mark behind. And as we develop our interest in doing that, then we're looking at things, people and things. And we may draw. We discover a circle. And after a while, we don't know anything about anything. We don't know many words. We don't know anything. But we were fascinated by the process of doing art. So we may put some eyes in there, and maybe a nose or a mouth, and scribble some hair in there, and put a little body, and make a house. We kind of see a house as a square thing. It's got a door. And the doorknob was really important to us when we were little. So we put the doorknob in there, and maybe a window, and a chimney with some smoke. It doesn't come out of chimneys now, but it used to. So that's what we did when we were children. So from the time we're infants, we're learning to interpret the three-dimensional world around us, and to represent it on a flat surface as a line. And when I teach sculpture, I tell people there are no lines in nature. But that's what we see. That's how we learn to interpret. So sculpture is another step. Sculpture is totally different than just drawing lines. And yet drawing and sculpture are complementary. They intermingle. They relate one to another. So all of art, when we talk about a kid having talent, for example, oh, you're so blessed. You're so lucky. And after achieving a lot in life, people often come say, oh, you're so blessed and so talented. You're so lucky. I could never do that. If we work with those talents and develop them, more talents will be added. But if you don't work with it, no others will be added. So talent is really a starting place. But what makes great art is not so much talent, but dedication and desire and curiosity to know more. In other words, if you start drawing pictures as a child, suddenly you like doing it, but you realize this isn't right. There's something wrong with it. So you study. Just by observation, you learn and observe more. So you're developing your talent sometimes without instruction. But there are some things that people always need instruction on. For example, if we had everybody and whatever audience is listening to this and watching this, if we had them take a piece of paper and draw a head and then place eyes on it, a nose and a mouth, I can promise you every single person would put the eyes too high on the oval of the head. If I even instructed them and told them how to do it, they would still get it wrong until they were told exactly what the proportions of the face are. Then they could do it much better. I did this with our neighbor for family home evening one night, and it was amazing what they could do with just a little bit of instruction. So talent needs to be fed, and sometimes we need ideas and suggestions from others. In the arts especially, with a lot of abstract art, the idea is the artist just has to express himself. It's all about talent. Well, to me, it's very little about talent and a lot about curiosity and striving and wanting to develop that talent. Many years ago, I took a trip to Europe, and I wanted to discover the secret of why Michelangelo was the greatest sculptor of all time. I mean, you can put Bernini and a number of other sculptors in that same category. Why were they the greatest at what they did? Why was Rembrandt the finest painter of his era and his place in the world, in Amsterdam? I discovered the secret. I discovered what they learned was, what they did in their work was, they knew more about their craft than anybody else living during their day. They learned that through curiosity and hard work. They learned to observe things nobody else was seeing. In fact, Rembrandt was sued once because he did a painting of some members of a guild, and they wanted to sue him and demand equal treatment under the law. Because in those days, they painted everybody's portrait was as important as everybody else's portrait. But he created this great scene called the Night Watch, and he created a real composition, an artistic composition. And some people were hidden in the shadows, and some were out front, and these people were very upset because they were in the shadows, and they wanted equal treatment under the law. So some things never changed, but he was innovative. He was creative. He knew more about, there are two things that I try to preach to painters about painting and drawing, linear perspective and atmospheric perspective. He knew more about atmospheric perspective or aerial perspective than anybody else during his day. And to prove that, if you look at the Night Watch, and you look at the white on the collar of somebody that's right up front, and then you look at the white in the collar of somebody behind, you'll see that it isn't as bright a white. All the whites, the lightest values come forward, the darkest recede, but the dark values, the greatest contrast is in the front of the painting. So the darkest darks and lightest lights are there, and then they fade away as they go into the atmosphere, kind of like thinking of the horizon and how the mountains kind of go to a bluish gray color. So that's what art and creativity is to me. It's becoming curious, starting with a raw basic talent, and then from there, you know, having a passion and just working hard to learn all you can about the craft.