Saturday, June 09, 2007

Do You See What I See? Pt. 2

Last time I asked you readers to do an assignment. If you did your homework, you should have a sheet of paper with your name written all over it. It should be written with your non-dominant hand and overlapping in several directions so that you can hardly tell it's your name. If you haven't done that yet, you have one last chance. Go ahead, I'll wait.

OK, now I need you to go find your markers, colored pencils, or whatever you have. Steal your kids' crayons. Gather up different kinds of pens if that's what you have, blue, black, gel, ballpoint, highlighters. Now color in your art. Seriously. Any way you want. You don't need to color the whole thing. You don't need to stay in the lines. And you can use either hand for this part.

What do you see? Chances are you felt signing your name with the wrong hand was awkward and unattractive. Do you feel any differently looking at it now?
I've done this exercise with several groups of people and two main points come up. One is that your name represents you. And there it is, a work of art right in front of you. The second thing is that people often assume their non-dominant hand is less functional, less capable than the one they normally use. What makes this powerful is the process of creating something appealing and interesting with a part of ourselves we think of as inferior.
I bet you really wish you'd actually done the assignment.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I DID do it, so there! And thanks for leading us in this exercise. : )