Lesson Info
2. knowing your butt
Lessons
Look at Me
1seen, heard, loved
08:35 2knowing your butt
06:07 3why we're here
05:55 4your work is a gift
04:45 5a song to sing
03:31Love
6love (the assignment)
07:42love (the crit)
28:49Always the Other
8the ass divot
01:48 9like tarantino
04:30 10always the other (the assignment)
12:06 11the cliche
11:12 12always the other (the crit)
45:13Explodes in the Brain
13Explodes in the Brain
30:32Big Nothing Little Nothing
14big nothing little nothing (the assignment)
01:54 15don't fall in love
04:35 16big nothing little nothing (the crit)
53:23There Ain't No Rules
17ain't no rules
01:16 18yesterday, today, tomorrow
08:33Allow Freedom
19allow freedom
01:41 20show & tell
22:29Born (wildly) Creative
21born (wildly) creative
01:48Subscriber Bonus Lessons
22do the work
34:35 23show & tell (part 2)
16:04Lesson Info
knowing your butt
I think, you know, but my name is James Victory and this is a class that had no title. It was a class that I taught for like almost 20 years at the School of Visual Arts in New York. It was called GD or something, you know, graphic design for third years. Uh And the students just like picked teachers names, whatever, whoever they knew of, right? Um But after a couple of years of doing this, my chairman kind of got wind of what was going on in my class and he put it in the catalog. It was called Knowing your butt from a hole in the ground because that's what it was. It was really trying to figure out, you know, which is my ass and which is my elbow, right? Really trying to figure out, really asking people to, to, to, to find out to, to, to, to put themselves in their work, to divulge themselves. There are three major ideas. Actually, most of the things that we're gonna talk about today um came from, came from this class and then were turned into effect perfection. The book, right? Um S...
o we're gonna talk about these and the three big ideas that we're gonna talk about, they're gonna come up again and again and again and again and again is the first one is, and this is again, born creative and then bringing it all the way through to adulthood, right? The things that made you weird as a kid make you great today, everybody on the planet is still, they are still basing their entire lives on the shit that made them weird as a kid. And if they're not doing that, then what they're doing, they're basing their entire lives, how they go through their day. If they're not basing it on the things that made them weird as a kid, they're basing it on the trauma they received all the shit that stops them, all the shit that blocks them, all the shit that, that, that, that, that, that the reason why they have crappy jobs, the reason why they're unhappy because they're letting that stop them instead of the drive, the, the, the innate beautiful natural creative drive to be born creative, right? So the things that made you weird as a kid make you great today, we're gonna come back to that a number of times. The second part is in the particular lies, the universal because I'm gonna show you your thoughts, your opinions matter, the things that you're afraid of and the things that you love are the things I'm afraid of and the things that I love, it just works that way. We have shared humanity, right? A great filmmaker doesn't, doesn't have marketing agency telling him what subjects to film. He's gonna just go, uh I broke up with my girlfriend and I feel really bad and I'm gonna make a movie about it. Right? And then we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna understand that pain we're gonna feel for him in the film because in the particular lies the universal. And the third part of that, once you understand that the things that made you weird as a kid make it great today. And then understand that all of your opinions, all your thoughts, everything that you think is beautiful or ugly or crappy or whatever is valid. And here comes the big one, put it in your work, put it in your work, put it in your fucking work. OK? So I was born to do my job. I was born to do this. I was born creative. I just didn't know how to, I didn't know it wasn't. I, I came from a small town and there were no precedents. There was nobody who was getting paid to be creative, right? So, um it took me a long time. I had to fail out of two universities um and move to New York and be around some creative people. And I started working as a, as a professional designer and I thought, well, you know what I, maybe I should give back. So maybe I should teach. So I started teaching at the School of Visual Arts and um um they gave me the job and just basically set me free. I said, here's your class, here's your roster. People showed up. OK? You got a class and I walked into class and I'm like, hi. Uh what the hell are we doing? I didn't know what to do. So I started, I made up these assignments. I made up this class called Born Creative. Um It was based on some assignments that I knew about that. I had heard of that. I was given from a um a few European mentors of mine, uh particularly a designer named Henrik Tomaszewski is where the, where the assignments come from. He, he taught at the University of Warsaw from the fifties until the seventies. Um And he himself said I didn't know how to teach, I didn't know how to make somebody a painter or somebody an artist, but I could teach him how to think. So this class, the way this class came about is I used those assignments. Um And I was just given titles. I wasn't taught how to teach them. I was just given the, the, the, the, the, the titles and the titles are abstracts. They're just these quite frankly meaningless. I'm like, shit, I could have made this up. It's just these meaningless titles and the process is to give students these meaningless titles and they first have to figure out what that could possibly mean. And then they have to figure out from there, figure out what it means to them. So now they've got to inject themselves into the assignment. That's the thrilling part. That's the fun part. That's quite frankly, the really hard part is put themselves in the work, right? And then they have to figure out, OK, this is what it means to me. Now, I have to show it in two dimensions on paper as simply as possible and then hang on and hope that other has meaning for other people. And what happens, what happens through this pro process is they get so in touch with who they are and where they came from and so in touch with like the things that made them weird as a kid. And so in touch with understanding that in the particular lies the universal, like the there the things they're thinking about the fears, they're thinking about the monsters under the bed are the same for everybody else.
Class Materials
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Richard Lynch
I really enjoyed the frank style that the class was delivered. Jealous of the 4 students who were in person. I work as an Aerospace engineer and am trying to find a way to relearn to be creative. This class and the exercises made me think and I have noticed that I enjoy taking different perspectives during boring meetings and drawing doodles that make me smile. Unexpectedly, my coworkers have said my work has improved lately. I think because I have become more open to possibilities outside of the tried and true.
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