How a museum visit can lead to a book, and how a book can lead to a creative experiment. This post explains you the story behind The Fruit Experiment.
On Sunday the 3rd of May 2015, one of my study friends and I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art & Design in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. The running exhibition was called How we work, New Dutch Design, and it illustrated the work and preceding process of a new generation of Dutch designers.
At that moment, not the exhibition itself but the museum shop triggered something within me. In the museum store, I photographed the front page of a book that caught my attention but that I did not buy. I tend to do that more often, admiring a product/book/item but not feeling like buying it directly.
Time passed by after the museum visit and nothing happened, until this summer. The exhibition came back into my mind, and unconsciously I started developing ideas on how I could start sharing my work. How could I cooperate with other people to support me in sharing the work I make?
You might wonder why I needed to start sharing my work. Next to my daily work, I have quite some creative ideas and small projects running. However I am that kind of person that is never really satisfied with the result, or even keeps the product and process to herself and is not really showing her work to others. Although I believe that inspiration from and for others is the most powerful tool in creativity, I am not able to fully open up regarding my creative ideas. To overcome this habit, and start enjoying my own work and process more, I decided that it was time to stop protecting myself by not sharing my work. It was time to move a step forward.
The moment I realised that, was also the time I felt like buying the book I had photographed in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. 2 months after our museum visit I ordered ‘Show Your Work’ of Austin Kleon, the English version. At the same time that the ideas for The Fruit Experiment started to crystallise, I was buying the book that should have inspired me to start a project like that in the first place. My need for this experiment and reading the book perfectly came together; the book inspired me to push through the experiment and the experiment showed me the value of this book. It is remarkable that precisely the exhibition where I found the book showed what the book is preaching; share your process. That is also exactly what I will be using this blog for during The Fruit Experiment.