Just a quick post tonight – I’m in Spokane, WA for a 3-day intensive residency program that’s part of my Master’s degree, my schedule is packed, and I’m also preoccupied with emailing back and forth with my new found sister in England.  The residency courses seem  interesting, though.  The course is called Leadership & Imagination, and we started with a 4-hour session tonight on Art and Imagination.  Anyone that knows me knows I am the least artistic or creative person on the planet – perhaps with the exception of writing, but even that seems a stretch for me to say with confidence.  We had to do a few drawing exercises which were interesting – one was to look at a printed sketch upside down and try to draw it.  It was impossible.

Apparently, for logical, organized, left-brain thinkers like myself, this is supposed to help you trigger your right-brain.  Almost like a warm-up exercise to get you to be creative.  The other exercise was to draw our own hands without looking at the paper or picking up our pens.  It was also impossible, but I was shocked that you can actually make out that my sketch is a hand, even if some of it is deformed.  I’ll scan these when I get home.  We also had to work with clay.  We had to keep our eyes closed, picture an animal, and just try to form that animal from the clay.  The only animal I could think of was my very fat and fussy cat.  I thought I was making some progress, but then the professor called time, and instead of my cat, I saw Gollum with one arm and one leg (which was meant to be the cat’s tail), while everyone at my table had cute puppies and turtles.  Tomorrow is Imagination and History for 4 hours, then Architecture and Imagination for another 4 hours.  Saturday is Imagination and Drama, then Imagination and Film.  So, for now, I’m off to get some sleep.  Hopefully I’ll fare better in the morning.