Perspectives on CreativitySession Descriptions

Keynote address

Ellen Winner, PhD
“Gifted Children: Myths and Realities” 
Nine myths about gifted children will be discussed and the latest scientific research on these children will be reviewed in an effort to set the record straight. Among the topics to be discussed are the relationship between gifts and learning disabilities, the relationship between child prodigies and autistic savants, and the question of why so few child prodigies become creative eminent adults who alter their domains. Winner will present research examining the misconceptions we hold about highly gifted children, and show how recent research forces us to reconsider our stereotypes about these children. The study of gifted children can help us understand typical development and can shed light on the nature of little-c and big-C creativity.

Session 1

Arthur Grugan, PhD
Holy Family University
“Wassily Kandinsky: The Creative Breakthrough to Absolute Painting”
This presentation examines the birth of absolute, that is, non-objective painting.  This new art form issued from the creative struggles of Kandinsky, whose career as an artist was devoted to the inauguration and the preservation of such art.  Creativity is treated as an inner requirement that impelled Kandinsky into his work.

Fred C. Weaver, PhD
Morrisville State College
"Creativity Inspires in Social Work Practice" *
This presentation is a qualitative study of 26 social workers in the mid-Atlantic region who have been identified as creative. 

Jonna Kwiatkowski, PhD & Carlo Cerruti, MEd
Emmanuel College & Harvard Graduate School of Education
"High-tech vs. Low-tech Enhancement of Creative Cognition" *
This presentation is designed to critically analyze the effectiveness of two novel
techniques, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and meditation, in enhancing creative cognition. Both techniques can augment perceptual and cognitive skills and target disinhibition of unconscious associative thought, long recognized as playing a role in producing novelty. The potential benefits and costs of both approaches will be addressed.

Margaret O'Rourke-Kelly, PhD
Spring Arbor University – East Region
"Expressions of Creativity in Rural Life: The Dora Stockman Legacy"
Dora Stockman (1872-1948) was a model of creative enterprise finding outlets for creative expression from Grange Halls to the Michigan State House of Representatives. Using the media of her age, this often overlooked reformer played a vital role in Michigan’s history, educating and informing in an entertaining way.
                       
Carolyn Szala, MA, MS, ATR-BC, LCAT
College of New Rochelle
"Creativity and Mental Health: The Art of Mourning" *
In times of profound anxiety and distress, a person’s creativity can offer meaningful imagery to help cope with confusion, trauma, and grief. This case study illustrates how art therapy engaged the creative process to help a young woman “re-collect” herself from a disorganized manic state while grieving her father’s death.

* These workshops are eligible for 1 continuing education credit each.

Session 2

Christina Robertson, PhD
Career Resources Management, LLC
“Creativity and Aging” *
This presentation will discuss research conducted with adults over age 65 who engaged in vocational and avocational creative activities. Data showed creative activities helped participants cope with the challenges of aging, provided meaning, and helped them address developmental and spiritual issues such as developing wisdom, transcendence, and facing death.

Larry Thompson, MFA
Samford University
"Chasing Flow: One Painter's Search For The Optimum Environment To Achieve Creative Success"
The presentation will be from an artist's perspective on how environment plays a crucial role in the creative process.

Carlo Cerruti, MEd
Harvard Graduate School of Education
"Does ‘taking your mind off’ a problem benefit complex, creative cognition?" *
Creative cognition is often conflated with divergent thinking, yet this approach ignores the important contributions of initial convergent preparation. Two studies show that initial focused thought is essential to solving a complex and creative verbal problem. Moreover, I use a stage model design to show that a brief period of distraction, or unconscious thought, can benefit creative cognition.

Beth A. Thomas
Ohio State University
"Surpassing knowing: Metaphor and category re-conceptualization in the artwork of Mark Dion"
This presentation focuses on the work of post-modern artist Mark Dion to examine metaphoric relationships between visual/material culture and ways of conceptualizing what it means to know. The implications of those relationships for creative thought, strategies for examining conceptual categories through visual/material culture study, and implications for education are considered.

Paul Nolan, MCAT, MT-BC, LPC
Drexel University
"Creativity, Music and Therapy: Accessing Creative Potential to Enhance Mental Health" *
This presentation uses multiple methods to demonstrate how music and the therapeutic relationship can facilitate creative thinking, resulting in improved reality testing and relationships.

* These workshops are eligible for 1 continuing education credit each.

Session 3

Marianne Roccaforte, PhD
Paradise Valley Community College
"Beyond Creativity…Seeing 'Into' the World: The Artist's Experience of the
Imagination in Everyday Life" *
How might the imagination of artists influence their experiences outside art-making, such as hiking, holding a conversation, or watching TV? This session will examine findings from a phenomenological study of artists across disciplines; note connections with key philosophical theories and psychological research; and offer recommendations for counseling practice with healthy artist populations.

Karen Rosnick, MA
West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District
"Cultivating Creativity" *
Creativity as a component of a self-actualized person and as a personality characteristic in Nobel Prize recipients will be explored.

John Kounios, PhD
Drexel University
"The Cognitive Neuroscience of Creative Insight" *
One form of creativity is sudden creative insight -- the "Aha” moment.  Our research has used neuroimaging to (a) reveal brain mechanisms subserving insight, (b) demonstrate neural correlates of preparation to solve an upcoming problem with insight, and (c) show that individuals who tend to solve problems with insight have a characteristic pattern of "resting state" neural activity.

Mindy Atkin, MA
Art Therapist
"The Healing Power of Creative Expression: Artwork of Martin Ramirez" *
Continued creative expression through ritual and repetition enabled Martín Ramírez, diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, to transcend mental illness and affect healing and quiescence within. In this focused state of creativity imagination and challenge co-exist and strengthen consciousness and connect him to the world further illustrating the healing power of creativity.

Rosalie B. Minkin, TEP, MSW, ATR-BC, LCAT
East/West Institute for Psychodrama and Sociodrama
"The Hand and the Glove: Creativity and Spontaneity" *
Creativity is a sleeping beauty that is effective when it catalyzes with spontaneity.  Spontaneity is the catalyst to creativity. Individuals within group therapy setting explore their creativity and begin to liberate their spontaneity, resulting in expansion of self-confidence, self-esteem, and capacity to act, react, and interact.  This session will examine the theoretical and practical dynamics of creativity and spontaneity. 

* These workshops are eligible for 1 continuing education credit each.

Session 4

Lorraine B. Festa, PhD
Arizona State University West
"Unleashing Your Hidden Muse: The Discovery and Expression of Creativity in Midlife Women" *
Have you thought about following a creative career in midlife or at any time? What does it take to express your creativity? Listen to this presentation and learn about the journey of midlife women who overcame early parental discouragement and personal challenges to assume responsibility for the development of a creative career that eventually led to positive change and self-empowerment.

Marcella Tarozzi Goldsmith, PhD
"Imaginative and Artistic Creativity"
Creativity is more than having aesthetic experiences, and it is different from problem-solving, which is limited to practical tasks, and not necessarily related to art. Instead, imagination and artistic creativity proper spring one from the other; combined together, they produce new artworks with different techniques and so develop different styles.

Catherine Butler Smith, M. Phil, LRAM
Psychotherapist
"A Dangerous Gift" *
This presentation endeavors to explain the origin and consequences of composer’s obsessional feeling that their creative talent is a special gift, which they are compelled to perfect. Both historic and contemporary examples will illustrate this, psychological evidence from the author's research and her lifetime's experience as a performing musician and psychotherapist.

* These workshops are eligible for 1 continuing education credit each.

Session 5

Annie Stanfield-Hagert, LCSW
University of the Arts
“The Portrayal of Women in Early American Popular Music…From the Poor Waif to the Red Hot Momma with a Sainted Mother in Between”
Early popular music told either of a woman’s sexuality, which was apparently dangerous, or lack of sexuality, which was noble and self-sacrificing. Recorded and live performances will address varied women’s roles personified in the American culture of the 1890s to the 1930s and the use of ethnic minorities or migrants, either to celebrate the attributes forbidden in acceptable majority women or to romanticize social inferiors. 
                       
Elizabeth Hartzell, PhD
Drexel University
"Understanding the Creative Process Through the Prism of Jungian Psychological Type" *
This research attempted to clarify the creative process by interviewing eight practicing artists who represented Jung’s Types and viewing art from their oeuvre.  The strategy was to illuminate the supposed interface of Type, Type process, and artwork to understand the artist in greater depth and diversity.
           
Tom Block
Human Rights Painting Project
"Painting as Prayer: Understanding Artistic Process as Mysticism"
This illustrated lecture explores how a true artistic search mimics the mystic's quest. By actively acknowledging the symbiotic relationship between the spiritual path and the personal artistic quest, the artist can help infiltrate historic conceptions of mystical realization into our hysterical, post-contemplative culture.

Eric Aron Steinmiller
University of North Texas
"Critical Theory, Creativity, and Artistic Production"
Although we cannot know absolutely what inspires an artist to make art, it is possible to identify contributions critical theory make to facilitate and sustain creativity in artistic production. Two aspects of the theme will be discussed: evidence in historical examples, and the relevance of critical theory for art education.

Cat S. Marshall, MLA
Louisiana State University
"Creativity and Novice Design"
When teaching novice design students it is pivotal to begin a pedagogical dialogue with the student that exercises the brain and hand connection of creation through activities that provide a basis of understanding how to abstract ideas, forms and concepts into spatial constructs and drawings. This paper will provide dialogue about successful drawing and making projects that awaken the “Aha” moment in novice designers to become creatively skillful.         

Tobi Zausner, PhD
Long Island University / C. W. Post Campus
"Creativity and the Transforming Illness: How physical difficulties inspire art" *
Illness may feel like an impassible barrier, but it can become the doorway to a new and more creative existence. Many of the world’s greatest masterpieces of visual art were inspired by an artist’s poor physical health. These individuals used their challenges to enhance their creativity and transform their lives.

* These workshops are eligible for 1 continuing education credit each.



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