monday studio tip of the week

photograph, the selby

this week's tip again comes from twyla tharp's book the creative habit and will exercise your brain as well as your creative thinking. choose any one object in the room and make a list of 60 things you could do with that object. this is an exercise she does when she lectures at colleges (she uses a stool as an example in the book) and finds that the first half of the ideas are the most obvious and as the list approaches 60 and people begin to stretch their minds, the answers are more imaginative. my suggestion is to time yourself to five minutes to come up with a complete list-this will make you less likely to think too hard about your answers. have fun!