The essentials of a creative life

African sculptor El Anatsui is a Late Bloomer who took the New York art world by surprise in his 60s.   Using discarded items—the foil and caps from liquor bottles, the serrated tops of milk cans—he creates works of astonishing majesty and beauty. He is best known for his “walls,” floor-to-ceiling structures with folds as sumptuous as Renaissance textiles, and for his installation on the Highline in Manhattan,  incorporating mirrors and corrugated roofing to expand the city’s view of open sky.

Anatsui’s rise has four pertinent messages about late-life creativity.

First, Late Blooming often involves working with materials that others have rejected—like cans and bottles rescued from the garbage bin.  We start by rescuing aspirations we may have put aside because our mentors failed to value them. A filmmaker goes back her first love, painting, using her well-honed visual sense.  A writer, known for his travel pieces, returns to his first inspiration, the short story.   A psychologist reads through her journals, discovering  her early thoughts on heartbreak and abandonment, a theme she's ready to tackle from a different perspective after decades in the consulting chair.

Second, Late Blooming requires us to assess fundamental assumptions about the nature of our work. Anatsui challenges long-held views of sculpture as something made of “approved” materials and thus creates some startling effects, as though he were encapsulating the history of art in a single medium. In a New York Times review of his 2010 exhibition Roberta Smith wrote “…the works evoke lace but also chain mail; quilts but also animal hides; garments but also mosaic, not to mention the rich ceremonial cloths of numerous cultures. Their drapes and folds have a voluptuous sculptural presence, but also an undeniably glamorous bravado.” 

That bravado stems from a radical embrace of new methods and procedures, and from an unbridled willingness to experiment.  So what about the art of creating your own life?  A social worker goes into business, providing at-home services for the aging, drawing on her business acumen. A physician convinces his colleagues  to donate a week each year, repairing cleft palates, a common birth defect, for children in developing countries. How can you use a broader set of skills to achieve a new result?

Third, Late Bloomers not only create something innovative, they go about building it in unexpected ways.  Anatsui  works with 20 to 30 assistants to create each piece. In his small studio in Nigeria, he has revived the concept of the medieval guild employing apprentices to produce works of great sophistication and complexity. 

He also encourages curators to hang the pieces in their own way---allowing them plenty of room for interpretation. “Life is not fixed,” he says, “It is always changing.”  He told one reviewer: “I don’t want to be a dictator. I want to be somebody who suggests things.” 

As a Late Bloomer, ask yourself:  How can I collaborate with others? Where can I loosen up and begin to improvise?  This kind of thinking can lead to change in direction. A communications consultant now bills herself as a "creative partner" helping companies to come up with a  marketing strategy.  An attorney changes her practice to Collaborative Law, working with psychologists and financial planners to help families weather a divorce.

Fourth, Late Bloomers know that the bigger the vision, the longer it takes to refine.  In the short film, Language and Symbols Anatsui reveals that his first ambition was to turn our idea of African art on its head.  “African art is said not to have any abstraction,” he says. “Yet early on I discovered West African symbols called adinkra, that can refer to ways of saying goodbye, or to the oneness of God, or Unity.  I started building these concepts into my work and got interested in different kinds of language." 

Anatsui went on to develop a series of wall-height sculptures titled “Gli.”  That word means  barrier, but pronounced with a different intonation, it can also mean “story” or “disruption.”    

Ask yourself: What one idea have you been incubating all along?  Over the years, how has it grown more beautiful and complex? What long-held beliefs are you ready to disrupt with a new vision? 

For more inspiration, watch the short, Gravity and Grace, an introduction to the life and work of El Anatsui. Or better yet, buy the full length documentary, Fold, Crumple, Crush for $19.45.