In Her Lecture for the College of Fine Arts and Communications’ Faith + Works Series, BYU Design Professor Melissa Crowton Shared What She’s Learned from Her Creative Blocks and Emphasizes the Value in Being Unresolved
What do The New York Times, Google and Deseret Magazine all have in common? All three feature the artwork of BYU design professor Melissa Crowton. Crowton’s work, which is also featured in a number of children’s books, has given her a poignant awareness of the messy middle of creativity, a part of the process she called the “hole in the whole.”
Crowton drew inspiration from various artists throughout her Faith and Works lecture, including Italian artist Giuseppe Penone, best known for his large scale sculptures of trees carved out of old blocks of wood. “When I first encountered this work, I was really struck with this idea of the present living within the past,” Crowton said. Quoting French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, she continued, “it is not until late in life that we really revere an image, when we discover that its roots plunge well beyond a history that is fixed in our memories.”
In 2020, Crowton was working in a studio full time and doing freelance picture book work with any spare time she had. Though she was fulfilling many of her goals, she shared that overworking caused a persistent and lingering artistic block to an extent that she had never experienced before. “It may appear as if I have all of my loose ends tied up, but in actuality, my middle is still very messy and not all of it is visible all the time,” said Crowton. “Part of the strength I find with traveling through this middle process is what we choose to expose or hide away.”
During the pandemic, when many of her projects were paused, she decided that it would be a good time for some personal artistic exploration. “I was feeling really restricted by a too familiar creative process,” Crowton said. “The artistic block I was struggling with demanded that I start with the basics.”
These basics included materials like note cards, construction paper, glue, cardboard and scissors, as the pandemic restricted Crowton’s access to her usual supplies. Using inexpensive options removed the pressure of wasting more costly supplies in her artistic exploration. She started making abstract construction paper colleges, exploring form and dimensionality, before eventually moving into graphic narrative, painting ceramic vessels, and creating interactive “books” that delved into various scenes and concepts.
Crowton said that though she values collaboration and feedback in her work, this stripped back approach allowed her to have an intimate conversation with herself and make decisions that were her own and not influenced by anyone else.
No matter how each of these artistic endeavors turned out, Crowton recognized the value in each of them. “It presents a problem when I have to idealize a consistent, positive creative process, and it’s prohibitive to my creative development,” she said. “There were many projects that I made mistakes of, and I actually find those to be just as valuable.”
Crowton shared that as a young artist, she struggled to find her niche, mistakenly thinking that developing and perfecting a singular way of working was what would make her a great illustrator. Years later, she realized that it was actually flexibility that would allow her to best grow creatively, as evidenced by her widely varied body of work.
“I love the idea of being unresolved, flexible, open,” said Crowton. “I continually comfort myself with the idea that this version of myself is not the final version.”