Where does inspiration come from?

... and how do I get more of it? Part 1

Today I’m pointing you at a new article from It’s Nice That titled “Hiding in plain sight: how do creatives find inspiration in everyday life?”

It was an honor to be interviewed for the piece, and I think the gist of what I wanted to say survived the editor’s knife. I was asked good questions and the author did a good job of boiling my 2,000+ word stories into a concise article. But for the sake of the long-form fans, I am going to share my full answers with you. I’ll break it into chunks, this being the first of maybe 3 posts.

The thing everybody want’s to know is “where does inspiration come from?” It gets asked in various ways, but that’s the prize we are all after. The assumption is that artists have an answer. We try. We lie. And sometimes we actually have a nugget of wisdom that can unclog the creative block that we all suffer from. I can’t promise you a breakthrough, but here’s how I think about it…

Question:
Your animations on receipts take something incredibly ordinary – and often discarded – and turn it into a site for storytelling. What first drew you to receipts as a surface to work on, and what interests you about working with something so fleeting?

Answer:
I had this experience where I pulled a receipt out of my pocket and there was this beautiful abstract texture on it. It took me a little while to figure out that it came from the hand sanitizer station that was placed next to the self-checkout lanes. The alcohol in the sanitizer has a chemical reaction on the thermal properties of the receipt paper. It was an oddly profound moment when a virtually invisibly ordinary object jumped out of the “auto-pilot” of my mind and became a fascinating, and surprisingly complex technology. Unlike normal printing, no ink is added to a receipt. Heat turns the receipt black, almost as if it is pulling the image from within the paper.

The other thing about receipts that I love is that they are both extremely personal and completely worthless. I love the idea of my art existing on top of documents that record the hamburger’s I’ve eaten or the diapers I’ve purchased. We’ve been trained to believe that art needs to be made with archival paint on pristine canvases. That’s a fantasy designed to sell art supplies. It’s way more interesting to use real artifacts from your actual life and transform them into something special. And if it doesn’t last forever in the tomb of a museum? Who cares. In my opinion the ephemeral should be more valuable than the eternal.

Question:
You’ve spoken about the idea that “beauty hides in plain sight.” What does that look like in your day-to-day life – when do you feel like you’re noticing something others might overlook?

Answer:
You only have to discover hidden beauty once or twice before you start to wonder, how much beauty am I missing because my auto-pilot is filtering it out? But learning how to turn off the auto-pilot mode is a lesson I have to learn over and over. As much as I want to be aware of my surroundings, I am constantly missing things. Here’s a mundane example...

Garage Sale Stickers

My wife tackled the tedious task of organizing a junk drawer. After she was done she had a little pile of those things that you don’t want, but you just can’t bring yourself to throw out. She handed me a packet of garage sale stickers and asked if I could use them. My instinct was to throw them out, the last thing I wanted to think about was a garage sale. After all, I’ve got important art to make! Luckily, they sat on the table long enough to actually notice them. I mean REALLY see them. I don’t know how many times I walked by them before it struck me that the neon colors are actually interesting. So was their shape. Once they went from the periphery of my attention to the center I could finally ask myself, “What could I make with this?” And then I was off to the races.

To be continued in part 2…

Thanks for reading and supporting my practice. It’s a joy to have you following my work and sitting with my words. Stay creative.

Your friend,
Ade

P.S. I still have some prints left from the garage sale sticker project. Message me if you are interested in purchasing one, or if you are a paid subscriber I’ll send you one for free.