Nuit Blanche, plus a little essay on Creativity

Last night I went to Nuit Blanche in Winnipeg, a night of free admission to various art galleries in the city that were displaying contemporary art and current music.  I walked around with my friends to a bunch of different places: the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG), the Frame Arts Warehouse, and the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.  We also saw a bunch of local music videos from Winnipeg artists at the Imax in Winnipeg.  Here are two of the videos I saw.

In almost every venue that we went to, I recognized an artist or a musician whose work was being put on display.  I`ve worked with a member of the Liptonians.  I`ve gone to church with a member of Chic Gamine.  The Riel Gentleman`s Choir, a men`s choir made up of guys from my university, was biking around and singing songs in random places.

 And Michael Dudeck, my favorite artist from the WAG show, drew two cartoons of me when we went to a Youth Activist Retreat together as teenagers.

Aww...  By the way, that's not his signature.  His name was listed on the contact sheet,
written up by someone else, of all of the attendees of the Youth Activist Retreat.

So I felt pretty connected to the creativity that was on display last night.

Which brings me to this question: Why am I not producing artwork and song the way these people are?  I'm pretty creative.  I could do it.

A big part of it is work ethic.  These people are constantly working to make their creativity happen.  The member of the Liptonians that I used to work with would go to work for 8 hours a day, and then bus home and practice or record music until 10:30 pm several nights a week.  He said that most of his friends were in the music business, because those were the only people he really had time to hang out with.  Another friend of mine said that in order to work so hard on creative projects, some of the people involved were relying on friends and family to help pay the bills.  So it seems to be a issue of priorities; what you're willing to sacrifice- time, for example- and who's willing to help you out.

Another big part of it is vision.  Some people seem to come up with idea after idea.  Jesse Krause, for example, is a very talented musician, originally from B.C. but living in Winnipeg, who seems to be coming up with some great new idea every few months or so (assisted by his friends, of course)!  The first one I can remember was Wild Things, a rock opera based on the book "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak.  I don't have any links to the performance, but here are some of the costumes from the production made by talented local artist (originally from Saskatchewan, but don't quote me on that) Chantal Mierau. 
 

The Riel Gentleman's Choir is also led by Jesse.  In university, Jesse was always in the thick of a group of people who built massive teepees in their spare time and were generally always up to making something.

Lastly, I think artistic community is a huge factor in productivity.  If you have a bunch of creative friends who are willing to work together and accomplish things, you can make a lot more stuff than if your friends are generally creative, but not willing to put in the time it takes to make amazing things frequently. There has to be a spirit of collaborative hard work that accompanies accomplishments like home-made rock operas.