I just love The Giant. If you ever visit Sand Beach in Acadia, Lucia Beach in Owls Head, or one of Maine’s other great (but virtually secret) sand beaches, you can practically relive the moment depicted in the painting by building castles with your own kids. Here’s a quick clip of some youngsters doing just that…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOg_HRjb3xM&feature=related
Or, for a slightly different perspective on
 | Michael Branca |
| Michael Branca has received fellowships at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center and the Carina House on Monhegan, as well as a grant from the Maine Arts Commission. He graduated from Colby College, attended Temple University Rome and is currently working on his MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He teaches drawing at Southern Maine Community College and has shown his work throughout New England at such venues as the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, June Fitzpatrick Gallery, Whitney Artworks and Stadler Gallery. To learn more about the artist and their work, please visit MikeBranca.com | |
 | Jill Dalton |
| Jill is a mixed-media sculptor and jewelry maker with a relentless need to collect rusted bit of metal. She uses found objects in her work to explore meaning, history, and humor. She earned her BFA in Sculpture in 1999 from Maine College of Art, where currently she is currently employed as Alumni Relations Coordinator. She and her husband, glassblower Ernest Paterno co-own Filament Gallery in Portland, Maine. They live in the East Bayside neighborhood of Portland with five formerly stray cats and expanding organic gardens. To learn more about the artist and their work, please visit FilamentGallery.com | |
 | Dan Dowd |
| Dan has been collecting found objects for most of is life and assembling them for over ten years. His most recent works are examples of what is created when some of those objects are united and interact. Any story that may be in his head as he creates the piece, or any story that he may write after the piece is completed, is different from the stories which a viewer may create. No one story is correct. This aspect of his work, and art in general, intrigues and amazes him. | |
 | Eva Deveau |
| My name is Eva Deveau. I am 7 1/2 years old. I am in the second grade. I like to go shopping with my mommy and I like to do art. I think about my art before I make it and I always try my best. I have had art shows at AVA Gallery and Chellie Pingree's Congressional Headquarters and showed some of my work at the Maine Home + Design Midcoast Show in 2009. | |
 | Nathan Deveau |
| Nathan relocated to Maine from Vermont to attend and graduate from the Maine College of Art. My latest work focuses on environmental responsibility through the use of natural materials many would consider waste, such as spent coffee grounds, grass clippings, tree branches, sawdust and more. I transform these materials into sculptures, mirrors, jewelry boxes, cutting boards, tables, sinks, countertops, flooring, tiles and more. To learn more about the artist and their work, please visit www.deveaugallery.com | |
 | Mark Kelly |
| Mark earned his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. He is a founding partner of Aarhus Gallery in Belfast, was the 2009 Earth Week Artist-in-Residence at Waterfall Arts, and was recently a group leader at Unity College's Art of Sustainability Conference. His work was included in Maine Home+Design's Art of Assemblage feature in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue. Exhibitions include the 18th Annual Drawing Show at the Boston Center for the Arts/Mills Gallery; the Out of Bounds altered book show, Rockport, ME; Art from Intuition – Northampton Center for the Arts, Northampton, MA; The Crossing of Time and Environment: Micro Installation – Tianan County, Taiwan (group collaboration); and First Traces at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME. He lives in Belfast with his wife and thee daughters. To learn more about the artist and their work, please visit AarhusGallery.com | |
 | Mike Libby |
| Mike is a multi-disciplinary artist who makes highly detailed sculptures, models, collages and drawings. Through diverse materials and methodologies, I explore themes of science, nature, fantasy, history and autobiography; highlighting illogical and acute correspondences between the real and unreal. To learn more about the artist and their work, please visit InsectLabStudio.com | |
 | Edward Mackenzie |
| Edward works mainly with 'found' objects – old and new manufactured objects, to create unique sculptural art. His work has a strong design element with references to humor, allegory, or history. Chosen material often evolves into a series of artwork, for example: PIANOWORKS using piano parts; OARACLE using sculling oars; PYROTECHNICAL using matches and matchboxes. Photo by Ric Prindle. To learn more about the artist and their work, please visit EdwardMackenzie.com | |
 | Louise Philbrick |
| The subject matter of Louise's work typically involves memory in one way or another. She seeks out found objects (doomed instrument parts, rusty street detritus, surf-worn stones) that readily demonstrate the rigors of their respective histories and re-contextualize them in a way that features those peculiarities. She makes a deliberate effort not to conceal the impositions of her own process (or the imperfections of the human touch) on them. To learn more about the artist and their work, please visit LouisePhilbrick.com | |
 | Anastasia S. Weigle |
| Anastasia received her B.A. in natural science illustration with a minor in museum studies from SUNY Empire State College and an M.S.L.I.S. (Library & Information Science) in archives management. Her professional work as an archivist influenced her work as an artist. Through discarded objects and ephemera—these small, insignificant pieces of nostalgic history—she found her true voice. Weigle is creating a magical history all her own. The inner child—who still believes that dreams do come true—is the master and teacher. Her works of art are created by forgotten bits and pieces of bric-à-brac in this world of discarded dreams. To learn more about the artist and their work, please visit http://anastasiaweigle.artspan.com/ |
If you search Amazon for "Innovation", you'll get over 39,000 book titles. I've read a tiny fraction of the total, but a much larger fraction of the true standouts. And I've written a couple books myself. Innovation is a huge topic, and you can slice and dice it in, well, tens of thousands of ways. Can such a large topic be boiled down to a few enduring principles and ten strategies in an 800-word column? Let's try.
The challenge begins with the definition of innovation. Most of the definitions I’ve seen are overly complicated, scholarly descriptions full of qualifications, and generally serve to exclude the everyman from innovating. IMHO, the best definition of innovation on the planet is the one given by David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue: “Innovation is trying to figure out a way to do something better than it’s ever been done before.” That echoes Thomas Edison’s mantra of “There’s a way to do it better—find it.”
So far, so good. That definition opens up innovation, and makes it accessible, regardless of your sphere of activity or function. Moving on, then, to the meta principles, and invoking the “Rule of Three” (we can remember three!) I come up with these:
Ingenuity. Ingenuity is human creativity plus application, idea plus execution.
Perfection. Imperfection is what drives innovation, because nothing’s perfect. Perfection is a pursuit, a journey, not a destination. The destination is a placed called “Better.”
Fit. Any innovation has to fit. In other words, if you have a better mousetrap, there better be a serious rodent infestation.
I can’t think of a successful innovation without some element of each in it. The challenge is, of course, wrestling those principles to the ground, making them useful, putting them into practice, every day, by everyone. Here’s my list of top ten key practices that help do that. I’ve included a couple of questions for each to prompt your thinking. Each of these relates to one or more of the three principles above.
Let Learning Lead. Learning and innovation go hand in hand, but learning comes first. Learning is defined as the creation of new knowledge through experimentation. Harvard’s David Garvin, an expert on company learning, maintains that “learning will always remain something of an art, but even the best artists can improve their technique.”
To what degree is experimentation built into your core work processes?
What routines are in place to quickly pilot new ideas?
Learn to See. The most successful innovations often come from customers—get out more and live in their world. Observe them, infiltrate and become them, and involve them in the design. Wear three hats: detective, FBI profiler, and problem-solver.
How well do you understand the problem your customers face?
What part do customers play in solution design?
Design for Today. Focus on present needs, or your great ideas remain just ideas. Peter Drucker once wrote “Don’t try to innovate for the future. It’s not enough to be able to say ‘In 25 years there will be so many very old people that they will need this.’”
What is the great and pressing need your offering meets?
What market, societal or demographic shifts can be exploited?
Think in Pictures. Aristotle said it best: “The soul does not think without a picture.”So get visual with your idea: sketch it, storyboard it, diagram it, mindmap it, whiteboard it, butcher-paper the walls and go crazy. Paint a picture of the future, and show progress against your goals in a vivid, appealing, unboring way.
What opportunities exist to use images and visual references?
What does the idea solution actually look like?
Capture Intangible Value. The most compelling solutions are often perceptual and emotional. It’s the art of business. A Harley-Davidson exec once said “What we sell is fear: the ability for a 43-year old accountant to dress in all-black leather, ride through small towns, and have people be afraid of him.”
How do you connect emotionally with your customers?
What one word would customers use to describe your uniqueness?
Leverage the Limitations. Resource constraints can spur ingenuity more than a big budget. Things start in the garage for a reason: you have an idea you’re passionate about, it’ll change the world, and it’s the lack of space, manpower and money that drive your resourcefulness.
How do your goals stimulate new thinking?
Are resource constraints blocking innovation, or enabling it?
Master Creative Tension. Don’t satisfice, don’t glom on to the obvious solution and then just sell the heck out it, or you’ll wake up an also-ran. Breakthrough thinking demands something to break through. Set goals high, and don’t back off, don’t compromise, don’t downgrade your thinking.
What tools do you use to frame problems and guide thinking?
What key mechanisms do you use to address complex challenges?
Run the Numbers. Think for yourself—temper instinct with insight, focus on facts, and do the math. Google was a math problem. So was Paypal. Nothing better than a little pattern science to fight conventional wisdom. Oakland A’s manager Billy Bean challenged convention by simply looking at statistics, and created a legacy of winning with the second smallest budget in baseball.
What patterns might be investigated to challenge convention?
What critical success factors in your market space are undervalued, and thus exploitable?
Make Kaizen Mandatory. Kaizen is the Japanese term for continuous improvement, taught to Japan by the U.S. Government following World War II. It’s the everyday practice of pursuing mastery and perfection. It has three steps: create a standard, follow it, and find a better way. Repeat again and again, because there is simply no limit on better.
How are new ideas encouraged in your company?
How do you sustain constant idea flow?
Keep it Lean. Complexity kills value—scale it back, make it simple, and let it flow. Take a page from Henry David Thoreau’s urge to “Simplify, simplify, simplify!” Combine it with the Michelangelo strategy: “I saw David through the stone, and I simply chipped away everything that was not David.” Target overload, inconsistency, and waste. Think: Google interface. In ’N Out Burger. Twitter.
How effortless is it for customers to pull value from you?
What would your customers love for you to eliminate, or stop doing?
Obviously, these are practical strategies, not nitty-gritty tactics. The questions should help prompt your own interpretation of the actual implementation of them.
Final thought: while innovation demands the pursuit of perfection, the best idea is often a brilliant imperfection. More on that to follow!
Matthew E. May is an innovation consultant and the author of In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing. He blogs here. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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ROCKPORT, Maine — Maine Media Workshops has launched a new scholarship fund for Maine high school students attending MMW’s Young Artists Program. Partnering with Camden National Bank, MMW has committed $10,000 for Maine Youth Scholarships in 2010.
The Young Artists Program, which takes place in June, July and August, provides opportunities for students ages 14-17 to study photography, filmmaking, multimedia and acting. More than 30 one- and two-week classes include introductory and advanced course work as well as specialized workshops in editing, screenwriting, animation and special effects.
Teens from across the country travel to Maine every summer to study with world-class faculty members and work with peers from a wide range of backgrounds.
Over the past three years, while 150-200 students have participated in the program, only 10 each year have been Maine residents. Community outreach has been a primary goal of the school since it transitioned to a nonprofit organization in 2007. The new scholarship fund will make it possible for more Maine teens to participate in the Young Artists Program.
“Camden National Bank’s commitment to opportunities for youth and cultural enrichment for the community make them an ideal partner for this program,” said MMW President Charles Altschul. “We’re grateful to [the bank] for providing critical support for the scholarship fund in its inaugural year.”
The experience of a workshop opens up for young people not only the chance to expand their knowledge of a favorite hobby, but also the opportunity to discover possible careers in creative industries. Many MMW high school alumni present examples of the work they produce in Rockport as part of their college applications or for employment.
“Sometimes all a student needs is an opportunity, a chance to express themselves and to be immersed in a creative environment,” said Greg Dufour, president and chief executive officer of Camden National Bank. “We’re pleased to partner with MMW to help Maine youth realize their dreams, which will help fuel the creative economy of Maine.”
Application is by letter of interest, evidence of financial need as demonstrated on the application form, accompanied by legal guardian’s most recent tax return, and three letters of recommendation. The deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. April 23. Awards will be announced the week of May 16.
Visit www.mainemedia.edu for complete course descriptions and details on registration and scholarships. Contact MMW directly by e-mail info@theworkshops.com or phone 236-8581.
t the first 2010 Pecha Kucha Night in Midcoast Maine on Friday, March 26 at 7:15pm at Lincoln Street Center, located at 22 Lincoln Street in Rockland. Nine individuals have been chosen to show 20 images for 20 seconds each, a fast-paced and engaging program to be followed by discussion and socializing. Pecha Kucha Night is open to the public and doors open at 6:30pm. There is a $5.00 admission fee and light refreshments will be served. Seating is limited to 280 seats on a first-come, first-served basis.
Juice Conference: The Juice Conference is bi-yearly conference held in Camden. Juice is a forum for the exchange of ideas, the sharing of success stories, and the development of strategies for Maine’s future. Juice connects leaders of the creative economy to foster growth and prosperity. By weaving together the arts, technology, and entrepreneurship, Juice inspires innovation by bringing talented people together from widely different backgrounds to build on Maine’s traditions. Juice 3.0 November 11-12, 2011 www.juiceconference.org
