today when I was a kid I had invisible
friends not imaginary but invisible and
that’s an important difference imaginary
implies that they weren’t real
whereas invisible is a matter of what
you can and cannot see when you have
great aspirations you need to be able to
see what isn’t yet visible and I wanted
to race sled dogs I prepared for this
dream in every way possible for a kid
growing up in the Midwest I started with
a team of six sled dogs who pulled the
shopping cart for me at the grocery
store in the commute to and from school
I would stare out the car window and
watch my extremely fast dogs raced my
mom’s car along the highway I read books
about dogs
I studied and drew them and maybe most
importantly I got to know their stories
and filled notebooks with them between
the ages of 6 and 12
I drew my team to over 100 sled dogs and
then a bunch of them fell in love
retired from racing and ran away to see
the world together so I didn’t grow up
to be a sled dog racing champion but
what I gained from preparing to be one
was much more valuable I practiced my
creativity I learned to take what was in
my head and make it with my hands so my
split dog racing days are long over but
since then a lot of people have told me
how lucky I am to be creative and I
almost agree I would argue that
creativity isn’t a bonus Jean that some
of us have and the rest of us don’t
in fact the origin of the word create is
to make something out of nothing which
is the existence of life itself
so we’re biologically programmed to need
to create new things with the purpose of
perpetuating life and we see this
exemplified in so many ways for instance
we’re far from being the only animals to
use tools or to make things birds build
nests spiders spin webs and ants build
insanely intricate labyrinths
underground we’re also not the only
animals to use decoration seduction on
war right nature is constantly showing
us just how inventive it is
so creating doesn’t make us unique but
what does make us unique as human beings
is beyond tool-making beyond decoration
something in us compels us to record our
own image and the images and information
of others in the surrounding world no
other animal does this in our special
brand of human creativity we have found
a way to bridge an understanding with
others beyond forming something out of
nothing we actively use creativity to
make new connections with the intention
of establishing lasting legacies going
back to my childhood I knew from an
early age what I’d love to do
I loved making art and telling stories
and that was important because I had a
highly unstable and unhappy childhood
and I know today how lucky I am to have
been able to envision other realities I
safeguarded the kind of daydreaming that
many adults thought was a distraction I
couldn’t sit still in the classroom
but even so without fail every evening I
would go to my desk and write and draw
until bedtime and every day on the
playground I would organize a group of
kids around me to listen to the latest
chapter of my story I practiced a level
of discipline that many adults didn’t
realize I had but I wasn’t supposed to
do what I loved my parents and other
adults are telling me oh you’ll never
make a living doing that Society won’t
respect you you’ll starve to this day
when I tell people that I’m an artist
they’ll ask Oh for living can you
imagine asking any other profession that
oh you’re a lawyer for a living
and I think yeah but more importantly to
be alive going back to luck I’m not
lucky because I’m creative I’m lucky
because I haven’t lost it I realized
that then that none of the adults in my
life were happy don’t get me wrong
most had good intentions my parents who
are immigrants wanted to distance our
family from the uglier parts of their
history my mom hated how women were
mistreated in her family my dad hated
how the Cultural Revolution
failed in China and deprived an entire
generation of a proper education neither
of my parents wanted me to repeat
history but in order to break a pattern
you need to be able to create a new one
and so often that’s what we resist doing
one of the most painful lessons of my
childhood came from watching my parents
relive the abuses that had traumatized
both of them so badly and while my dad
didn’t want me to be a suffering artist
he himself wanted to be a writer but he
worried he couldn’t do it that he
couldn’t write history when he finally
wrote his story he was too scared to
publish it and he died before getting to
really see what he could have done with
it I was 21 that year and it was a
wake-up call for me twice in my
adolescence I quit the arts because I
thought I was being foolish or
self-indulgent and I nearly quit a third
time that year as I sorted through my
dad’s things I found myself asking who
are you to think that what you have to
say or make is so important but I
realized that without some vision of
what we add to the world suffering will
not give way to happiness and
revolutions will not lead us to
Renaissance we live in a world with too
much stuff and the u.s. especially gets
accused of being a consumer culture it’s
easy to wonder what’s the use of making
anything but what we make is everything
our problem today isn’t that we value
stuff too much but that we value it too
little we don’t make work that lasts or
it’s worth taking care of and in the
process of criticizing our consumerism
it’s easy to forget that we have the
power to create what we consume so how
did we get to this point where so many
people will tell you that they’re not
creative you’ve probably heard it and
maybe said it yourself I’m not creative
I don’t know anything about art or music
or dance what’s sadder is when I hear
people resolutely claim that things like
the arts aren’t even necessary who say
if you want change
if you want to improve social standing
focus on the practical stuff like
engineering or accounting the stuff that
will get you a job but I find that
sentiment dissatisfactory
because it’s not an either/or and it
misses some vital points
why bother engineering something without
any vision for why it should exist why
maintain the checkbooks but the very
companies that driver inequalities this
isn’t just about the arts creativity is
about connection and without it we’ve
so my experience with loss and the
questions they’re after sent me on this
path to try and understand the role of
creativity in our survival and having
had the chance now to work across
industries I’ve gotten to see how it
operates in different settings and where
it seems to hide in 2011 I started
working at a commercial printing company
after leaving his job in the public
school system immediately I was
frustrated with the wastefulness and
petty office politics knowing that just
a 10-minute drive away were my students
at a school that was getting gutted even
so I stayed and I started listening to
the workforce that my students were
supposed to become a part of and I began
to see the deeper insecurities that
surfaced as our politics and as our
waste so if you looked at our desks you
would have seen meeting notes
spreadsheets numbers but if you talk to
people you would hear what they think of
one another and themselves in my last
position as at this company I worked in
lean process improvement and since then
I’ve gone to interview lots of people
across organizations and what I’ve
learned is this if you ask people what
they do they’ll tell you how complicated
it is how hard it would be to teach to
somebody else or to automate this is a
defense tactic people will hoard
knowledge and resources if they think
it’ll make them invaluable or
irreplaceable it happens on all levels
the irony is that they’ll also tell you
how hard it is to get the right
this happens because in a society rife
with social disparities people will seek
any means of self-preservation look at
most companies and you’ll see a clear
divide in the roles of men and women
there’s another divide where people who
have college degrees work office jobs
and people who don’t work in a plant
doing hard labor at a lower pay grade if
you’re a minority you’re more likely to
work in the plant and when I would go
out into the manufacturing area some of
my colleagues would regularly come up
and say how nice it was to see him in
aura tea in the office because it meant
maybe they had a voice or maybe they
could work there too and having spoken
with various managers on this over the
years who get frustrated on how to
motivate people for the right reasons I
have to say as long as inequality exists
people will fight for status and
security and it will keep getting in the
way of our desire for shared purpose
when we have done so many things to
disrupt our creativity we force
ourselves to seek social distinction by
sex race religion job title we write
policies to barricade rather than
exchange knowledge and opportunities we
form clicks instead of networks we see
it in politics now with how polarized we
are we see it in crime and war when
people lack resources they become
resourceful in any way possible so this
is how we end up diverting and
squandering our human creativity the
evidence is there that we are creative
and yet we’ve corrupted it we use it to
make ads instead of artwork to find
loopholes instead of designing better
systems when we devalue people’s
creativity we stop them from believing
that something better might be possible
and so our companies don’t evolve and so
our families and cities get stuck trying
to solve the same crises over and over
again but it doesn’t have to be this way
the same things that divide us can bring
us together our greater challenge is
this can we see beyond what connects us
immediately to reach what connects us
more deeply to answer this for myself I
left my last corporate job two years ago
to pursue my art work and connect it to
the cause as I care about and it’s been
a ride but thus far it’s the best
decision I’ve made I got to work on a
mural this summer with the students of
escuela verde in Milwaukee and I was
sold on wanting to work with them when
one of the teachers explained how to
learn about the ecosystem they go down
by the river they learn on site they
discuss why that River is important not
only what it has done for the city
economically but why it’s enjoyable why
it’s beautiful we partnered through a
nonprofit called artists working in
education to use public art as a way of
activating a neglected space we focus on
immigration which is an area that has a
lot of triggers for people right now
many of the students and their families
are a part of immigrant communities and
tensions rise around those who have
papers and those who don’t we would need
a whole day to do justice to the topic
of immigration but what we know is this
immigration isn’t new like all there’s
other species we’ve been nomadic in
pursuit of new resources and we have
always lived in this partnership of
local and global being rooted enables us
to build communities and to establish
cultures and values being mobile enables
us to share an advanced ideas and to
become curious rather than weary of the
unfamiliar so our goal for this mural
was to reveal the underlying
partnerships of opposites we understood
that the problem is in paperwork but how
what we decide goes on paper shapes our
reality
could we be the ones to set a vision we
did two months of workshops and early on
many of the students wanted to focus on
the mexico-us border but as we collected
the stories of our neighbors and
classmates our big epiphany came when
some of the students shared stories of
their Irish ancestors getting denied at
Ellis Island and having to cross the
border from Canada sound familiar
we’re talking about stacks of
generations reliving the same story we
study different plants and animals all
of its showed that nobody know life form
is purely local we studied fractals
somebody asked me we’re studying math in
art class and I said yeah and here’s why
what is a fractal a fractal is itself
repeated infinitely smaller and bigger
you draw a line and from that draw two
more lines and from there two more lines
and so forth
look at the pattern it creates where in
nature do we see these patterns zoom in
on a tree and you’ll see the same
pattern in the leaf veins in how the
branch is split and how the limbs of the
tree for account from the body now take
a moment with me and look at the palms
of your hands what do you see
can you see the pattern of your veins
and how your fingers branch out from
your hands and how your limbs branch out
from your body so this is the shared
repeated pattern that creates all the
projects like these excite me because
they indicate that we’re going in the
right direction that we’re thinking
holistically rather than compartmental
II there’s other evidence a change as
well like the DIY and maker movements
that are popping up all over the country
are pushed up by local shows that we
want to support the people we know in
our communities cultural groups and
language schools also show that as our
communities grow we want to offer
support and inclusion over exploitation
these are the proof of what we’re hungry
for but we have not yet reached a
tipping point creativity needs to be one
of our core values not just an
extracurricular and it needs to be
we have to ask what do we think is
possible for us what will we invest in
and whom and why who will we teach to
make and write history beyond monetary
profit
what’s our spiritual profit there’s a
reason our free speech is so important
there’s a reason that dictatorships go
after the arts first after personal
expression first if you can take or buy
people’s means of expression you can
control what they become so we have to
ask not are we creative but in what ways
are we creative how will we practice and
strengthen our creativity and what will
we use it for you don’t need to be an
artist you just need to know who you are
and why you’re here and if you have any
doubts on how to answer that just look
at your hands and know that with those
hands you can write history for the
friends you have and the ones you have
you [Applause]