[MUSIC]

A peak experience that I've had in my professional and

personal life is when I was asked to design a dress for

the Elmwood Village fashion show called Mass Appeal.

And the twist to it was that it was not to be made out of clothing.

We actually were asked to participate with a store that was not,

that it did not sell clothing.

So I chose a candy store on Elmwood Avenue to construct the garment out of.

But the challenge is that I don't have a background in fashion design.

So I had to figure out how I was going to construct a garment out of

a non-traditional material without, without any real dressmaking background.

I was the designer and then I had a model that I worked with.

And there were other artists as well working with

various stores in the community.

The environment that contributed to the outcome was having

flexibility with the store that I worked with,

where I was allowed to use any materials that I chose to.

That I had a model who was willing to

participate in something a little non-traditional.

Thinking about the creative process of what went into the development

of the idea.

I believe that, you know, working from, starting from a really open-ended source

where I can use any kind of material that was in the shop that I wanted to.

So really keeping my idea open and then from there narrowing down what I wanted,

the material that I wanted to use.

I actually decided to use gumballs for the entire gown.

It was, it was interesting because, you know, you could, I,

first thought would be to use candy wrappers, right?

So it could be, make it something that was more material like.

But I wanted to really do something that would be unusual.

And, so from there I thought, you know,

how am I going to make something out of gumballs?

Well, I, I thought back to, you know, a technique I used for a long time,

ever since I was a child.

I love beading and doing weavings with beads, so my grandfather taught me how to

bead with weaves and Native American patterns and things of that nature.

And so I decided to pull out a skill set that I had preexisting, but

apply it in a new way.

So I took the gumballs and we actually had, I think there were,

there were thousands of gumballs.

The dress ended up weighing two, 20 pounds in the end.

And so I drilled all the gum balls with a drill press and then had a huge weaving

loom, and I wove, so I wove geometric patterns to create the gown with gumballs.

[LAUGH] Yeah, I mean I,

I think that there are times during the process when you want to give up.

And sometimes having a person who, who is better at the,

who, who can tell you to keep working on it, or

can even help you when you're feeling like you can't handle it anymore, can be

really a great thing to have someone on that end of the spectrum, as well.

And then I think just being flexible, too.

Trying to say, you know, knowing that, if, when something comes up,

I can, I can fix it in some way.

You know, even the day of when we had the model, she had to lay on the floor and

get like, tied into it.

And then it was too big because I oversized it, so I had to cut gumballs out

of it on the, you know, like right on the site, and resew it together.

But knowing that there,

there's going to be solution, I, I think that I can figure it out.

The attributes that I would give the,

the product would be that it it smelled really good.

[LAUGH] And it, [LAUGH] it was, you know,

it was really a novel and really a novel solution to the problem.

And, but then at the same time, it was really beautiful in the end.

I think whenever you do would do an idea that goes, that's,

that's a little bit outside of, of what people expect, that you might,

you might get a negative response, in some ways.

But I think that that's part of, part of coming up with a new idea is,

is that you have to push past that.

But, for the most part, I felt like it was overwhelmingly positive response.

I felt really proud of the outcome because it, it

encompassed something that a skill that, that I previously had.

But I love the way that it came together in,

in a really, I felt a really original way.

If I could have a magic wand and wish for three things to increase creativity.

I would wish for the ability to take

skills that you have or interests that you have that might be very disparate and

think of ways you can combine them together.

because I feel like that's one of the great ways that you can have new and, and

creative ideas is by putting those different skill sets together.

[MUSIC]

Amy Hartman

Ignite Your Everyday Creativity

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