How We See What We See

HOW WE SEE WHAT WE SEE by Paul Henrickson,

Ph.D.

tm ©2008

The image above is one of forty presently available in a collection designed by me some thirty years ago when I was involved in trying to work out some problems in relation to conventional art critical statements. I soon became aware that while the array of conventional art critical catch phrases which were used in general to capture an attitude of the reader, to set the reader’s mind “in place” as it were, without the language becoming academically burdensome. It is a tricky situation to communicate telegraphically. And it is, for sure, quite usually a bore, to read academic language. In any event, what came of all of this rather ponderous thoughtfulness was a set of puzzles that, without words, would set the observer on the right track for evaluating what are called the formal qualities in works of art…by that, what is meant is simply the way a work of art is initially put together. Mike Yamamoto said:”We at Blogma have long been suspicious of conventional learning principles, especially when we got lousy grades. So we welcome ideas such as those from The Creativity Packet, which offers unconventional approaches to education, often non-verbal. Its latest concepts focus on the power of puzzles.”

Posted by Mike Yamamoto

These puzzles were also an outgrowth of some of the work Paul Henrickson did with E. Paul Torrance at The Bureau of Educational research at The University of Minnesota in the early 1960’s. This work had led Henrickson to consider the possibility that there were innate sensibilities, separate from training, which required unprejudiced and unformulated judgments which endeavored instinctively to bring order out of chaos. In short, present chaos to a creative mind and that mind will create an order out of it. With that in mind, then, a curriculum which emphasizes the training in the following of correct prescribed behavior will be similar, in intent and outcome, to forcing a naturally left-handed person to write with the right hand. There are, as we have learned, serious consequences to forcing a handedness on a person and for humane reasons such a striving for social regularity should be avoided.

These forty puzzles, in increasing complexity and based on color and design theories, introduces the puzzle solver to the behavior established by the designer. In short, after having completed the solution to a puzzle the solver would have nearly duplicated the behavior of the artist when he created it… but somewhat in reverse. Click here to view experimental video showing how the creativity packet puzzles are used.

This exercise in looking is basically very different from the exercises encouraged in the training to learn to write, calculate figures and to comprehend what others write. It is more related to why Zebras and tigers have stripes and why the underbellies of fish are lighter in color than their backs. The puzzles, therefore, support a different sort of survival need. A laterally discovered relationship between creative thinking and judgment, academic success and socially approved and encouragedmendacity was achieved in an experiment conducted at The University of Northern Iowa in the late 60’s where it was a policy of the university to accept as students in the teacher preparation program only those with a GPA of 2.3 or higher. When scores on creativity performance, aesthetic judgment and social lying were compared between the groups separated by that 2.3 score that the creative, non-lying personality was excluded from the program, thus assuring the educational system of teachers who were conventional, that is noncreative, and told misrepresented themselves in order to reach the perceived and accepted social ideal. That report is available on Dr. Henrickson’s

website (www.tcp.com.mt ) under the title “The Perceptive and Silenced Minorities” as well as on PDFCOKE.COM . Paul Henrickson is a psychologist, artist, and social gadfly and is resident in Gozo, an island in the Mediterranean one-half way between Gibraltar and Israel in the East/West direction and Sicily and Tunis in the North/South direction.

The cost of a complete set of Creativity Puzzles designed consistent with color and pattern theories and graded for difficulty together with their handmade carrying and storage bag is $442.00 including shipping, handling and insurance. Contact Kurun Vella at [email protected].

Henrickson foto: Maria Finger Henrickson: “The Red Painting”

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