Creativity is alive and well in this country, and I’m talking about old-fashioned creativity, where artists create works using only artistic tools and their own imagination, rather than cannibalize the creativity of someone else.

I’m still on a high after an art awards ceremony for northern Virginia students last night, a regional contest that sends the top winners to a national contest in New York. It was for students grades 7-12; most of the winners were high-school students, but one was my 8th-grade daughter, one of only three winners from her middle school.

Naturally I was there for her, and I snapped a photo when a slide of her artwork appeared four stories tall on the auditorium screen, and snapped several photos when she introduced herself to the crowd (I was so pleased she spoke loudly enough to be heard!).

I expected to enjoy those moments. What I didn’t anticipate was how moved I’d be by the creativity expressed by the other award-winning artists. I had already been impressed with an exhibit put on the night before at my daughter’s school, an event that featured art from about a half-dozen local schools. My daughter had a different piece in that show (it’s Art Week for her it seems), and there were a lot of really interesting pieces of art by other students.

But the awards show the next night featured the best of the best. Art teachers throughout the area selected a tiny sliver of their students’ best works for submission. Then eighteen professional artists juried those 1,600 entries, granting awards to about 200. Seven high school students earned scholarships.

There were paintings. Drawings. Computer illustrations. Photographs. Mixed media. Video shorts, animation and live-action. In many cases, you would have had no idea these were student-produced works.

I also liked it when the announcer would read from the descriptions the artists had written about their art. They were so sincere in the seriousness of their approach that at times it seemed a little odd coming from teenagers — what experiences do suburban kids have that would give them such artistic depth? — but their art for the most part did reflect their vision. I need to not sell these kids short.

This is obviously an example of how important art education is, even in times of budget cutbacks. A Fairfax County Public Schools board member said as much at the event last night, and it met a round of cheers from the large crowd. And it is also an example of the incredible creativity the next generation is bringing to our culture.

I mentioned in the lead paragraph how the works were original. By that I mean I didn’t see examples of this “remix” culture we hear so much about; only one of the two hundred or so demonstrated that particular approach. I don’t deny that there is some creativity involved in some of the mash-ups out there today. But let us not lose sight of the creativity that goes into the works that end up being remixed.

There were six short films shown, all student-produced. One set anime-style animation to a Coldplay song. The other five did not use copyrighted works; I checked the closing credits, and the soundtracks were original compositions, classical tunes out of copyright, or songs taken from online sites offering free licenses. In no case with these award-winning videos was one left with the notion that the music was somehow lacking; in fact, I found the familiarity of the Coldplay tune detracted from the visual presentation, while the other five found perfect symmetry of music and images. Oh, and none of the six felt the need to include footage from previously produced films.

I don’t know whether this sensitivity came from the students themselves or from instructions from their art teachers. To be honest, it doesn’t bother me that a Coldplay tune was used, and I suspect Coldplay wouldn’t care either. The band members probably would have liked the video. But the evening did show that we don’t need to use previously created works to produce new creative works.

All told, I feel very positive right now, very positive about the future of art in our culture, and very positive about the continued vibrancy of original art in what some call a “remix” culture.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 11:14 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under creators, education, events, fair use, licensing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.