free to be mediocre

I spent the past weekend attending Creating Connections 2013, a conference at UBC that aims to dialogue about the value of gender diversity in math/science and generate possibilities that can change the current dynamic (where men still outnumber women, particularly in certain fields).  I gained an interesting insight from the opening panel on Friday night: one audience member hypothesized (from her experience) that women leave math/science because they have too high expectations of themselves – they feel like they need to get As to continue in math/science and when they don’t, they switch to other subjects.  (Interestingly, the men appear content to scrape by with passing marks.)

Wait a minute, you say.  This is a blog on creativity and faith.  What do women leaving science have to do with art and spirituality?

I wonder if many people don’t abandon the idea that they are creative for the same reason that women might be leaving math/science.  For many of us (“artists” included!), the arts can feel like a place of falling short, rather like that of first-year students who get their first C when they take a real university math course for the first time.  In our culture of excellence, it is then natural to say “Well, I wasn’t so good at this; I guess it’s not for me.”  And so through a combination of expectations and experiences, people turn away from creative pursuits.

I have bucked this trend and continue to merrily dabble in the arts despite my clear “mediocrity” in most art forms; yet even I reflect the power of high expectations in my reluctance to self-identify as an “artist,” or even a “writer.”  I’m not really creative, I would say.  That’s a label for people who make a living doing their art.  I just write the occasional blog entry; I’m not a “real” writer. 

I do think there is some value in reserving the term of “artist” for those who make a living by practicing their art.  And certainly excellence is a good thing – as Jill touched on in her last post, one of the artist’s gifts/curses is their relentless pursuit of just the right thing.  But there is also a loss when we separate ourselves from life-giving things, like words and colors and movements and melodies (or: trigonometry and cell biology and the stars), because we feel like we aren’t good enough for them.

That’s where faith comes in for me.  Many of my experiences with art have shown me that art-making is God’s gift to everyone–no matter how good we are at it!  His generosity doesn’t depend on our talent; his grace permits us to be mediocre.  In a world of evaluation and excellence and judgement, we have all been set free to be artists, and say…

Woohoo!  Thanks be to God!

(image from Making Things With Kat, based on a cutout by Jenny Hawkinson)