Spark: How Creativity Works

by Julie Burstein, Kurt Andersen

Overview

“This is a book about joy, drive and art, work that we’re all capable of if we’ll only commit.” —Seth Godin, author of Linchpin

Public Radio International’s Julie Burstein, creator of the award-winning program Studio 360, along with its host Kurt Andersen, offers a rare, fascinating glimpse into some of the 21st century's greatest creative minds—from Yo-Yo Ma and Robert Plant to Mira Nair and Chuck Close, to David Milch and Joyce Carol Oates, to Rosanne Cash and beyond. Fans of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, Rosamund Zander’s The Art of Possibility, and Lynda Barry’s What It Is will be enthralled and electrified by this unique look at the creative process of the world’s most talented and prolific artists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061732393
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/10/2012
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.36(w) x 7.86(h) x 0.66(d)

About the Author

Julie Burstein is a Peabody Award-winning radio producer and TED speaker. Julie designed Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen for Public Radio International, and led the creative team at WNYC for many years. She's the host of Pursuit of Spark, conversations about creative approaches to the possibilities, challenges, and pleasures of everyday life.

Table of Contents

Foreword Kurt Andersen ix

Introduction xv

1 Engaging Adversity 1

Chuck Close 5

Donald Hall 14

Jill Sobule 22

2 Modern Alchemy 27

Ben Burtt 30

Elizabeth Streb 37

Richard Serra 44

3 The Cultivated and the Wild 57

Stanley Kunitz 59

Mel Chin 65

Julie Bargmann 70

4 Going Home 77

William Christenberry 82

Alexander Payne 92

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 98

5 Imagination's Wellspring 105

Mira Nair 108

David Plowden 113

Richard Ford 118

Bill Viola 123

6 Mothers and Fathers 127

Patti LuPone 130

Miriam Katin 132

David Milch 136

Kevin Bacon 139

Rosanne Cash 143

Joshua Redman 146

7 Creative Partners 151

Alison Krauss and Robert Plant 155

Ang Lee and James Schamus 161

Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi 172

8 Reweaving a Shattered World 187

Terence Blanchard 191

Lynn Nottage 196

Joel Meyerowitz 204

9 Getting to Work 213

Yo-Yo Ma 216

Isabel Allende 219

Joyce Carol Oates 223

Richard Serra 226

John Irving 228

Tony Kushner 231

Chuck Close 235

Acknowledgments 237

Notes on Sources 241

What People are Saying About This

Maria Popova

“Spark is an encyclopedia of inspiration plucked from today’s most revered creators, leaving you not with a one-size-fits-all blueprint to creativity but with a petri dish of eclectic insights for you to distill, cross-pollinate and fertilize into a richer understanding of your own creative life.”

Seth Godin

“This is a book about joy, drive and art, work that we’re all capable of if we’ll only commit.”

Editorial Reviews

Spark is a beautiful book, enjoyable and filled with life...You will find yourself contemplating the origin of the little lights, the sparks, which show themselves only when someone special looks within.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

“This is a book about joy, drive and art, work that we’re all capable of if we’ll only commit.” — Seth Godin, author of Linchpin

“Through enlightening conversations, these creative individuals demonstrate how they lift raw materials out of familiar contexts and create art that changes how we perceive the world.” — Publishers Weekly

“Burstein offers enlightening answers from the culture’s heavy hitters, as well as the process by which they stoked these embers into a roaring fire, and how you, yes, you, might too.” — Vanity Fair

“Spark is an encyclopedia of inspiration plucked from today’s most revered creators, leaving you not with a one-size-fits-all blueprint to creativity but with a petri dish of eclectic insights for you to distill, cross-pollinate and fertilize into a richer understanding of your own creative life.” — Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

“How better to learn about creativity than to talk with some of the world’s most creative people.” — Detroit Free Press

From the Publisher

Spark is a beautiful book, enjoyable and filled with life...You will find yourself contemplating the origin of the little lights, the sparks, which show themselves only when someone special looks within.

Philadelphia Inquirer

How better to learn about creativity than to talk with some of the world’s most creative people.

Detroit Free Press

Burstein offers enlightening answers from the culture’s heavy hitters, as well as the process by which they stoked these embers into a roaring fire, and how you, yes, you, might too.

Vanity Fair

This is a book about joy, drive and art, work that we’re all capable of if we’ll only commit.

Seth Godin

Spark is an encyclopedia of inspiration plucked from today’s most revered creators, leaving you not with a one-size-fits-all blueprint to creativity but with a petri dish of eclectic insights for you to distill, cross-pollinate and fertilize into a richer understanding of your own creative life.

Maria Popova

What brings on an idea? How does an artist make art, a designer a sketch, a writer a sentence? You won't find out in these brief profiles from Studio 360, though the book is not entirely without merit.

Host Burstein's book bears an unfortunate subtitle that promises what it does not deliver, for which see, most recently, Steven Johnson's excellentWhere Good Ideas Come From (2010). Instead, the book gathers what might be thought of as show notes, bits and pieces of what can sometimes seem a free-form exercise—for, as Burstein allows, the show ranges from talking with "Nora Ephron about cooking, and with Susan Sontag about war; with Rosanne Cash about creative children of famous parents and with Simon Schama about the way maps help us understand the world." The roster of talent is huge, and some of the pieces are appropriately memorable, as when the artist Chuck Close, now confined to a wheelchair, recounts his adventures experimenting with the perspectival grid in order to upend the brain's expectations, and when sound designer Ben Burtt discusses doing much the same with "tones and beeps and whistles and static," the stuff that populates the soundscapes ofStar WarsandWALL-E. Alexander Payne, the director of such offbeat fare asAbout Schmidt andElection, discusses the freedom brought about by shooting a Hollywood movie on familiar turf—in his case, Omaha. Photographer David Plowden recalls an early encounter with the Great Plains, where, he discovered, "[t]here was nothing to hold on to." Unfortunately, too many of the pieces are merely anecdotal snippets a couple of pages long, without development, connection. or follow-up. We learn nothing from actor Kevin Bacon's revelation that as a child he was encouraged to make model houses out of Elmer's glue and matchsticks, or from the aforementioned Ms. Cash's recollections of her father's (Johnny, that is) encouragement, for the elaboration of which see the liner notes to her recent albumThe List or her outstanding memoir Composed (2010).

Of some interest to budding artists, filmmakers and the like, but not particularly useful at that.

Kirkus Reviews