Crazy Creativity

Friday night, Chad and I went to the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner. It's something that Chad has to do for his job at Westar, since he's the Community Support Representative for the Lawrence area. He wasn't especially excited about going, so I tried to get him to just think of the evening as a date with his wife where we happen to get some free food, which I thought made it sound a lot more desireable! :)

The evening didn't start out so well because we got to Liberty Hall at about 6:30, thinking there would be a social hour, but they'd already started the sit-down portion of the program. The problem with starting so early was that dinner hadn't been served yet, and those of you who know Chad know that he gets really cranky when he's hungry! After a speech about the Lawrence Person of the Year and a speech from the outgoing board chair and a speech from the incoming board chair, we finally got to the keynote speaker, an artist/motivational speaker named Eric Wahl.

Although Eric's presentation was more geared toward corporate or educational settings, it was still pretty entertaining. He started and ended the program by painting a picture to music in dramatic fashion. The first was a picture of the Statue of Liberty and the second was this portrait of Einstein, which he actually painted upside down. His message had to do with fostering creativity and thinking outside the box when problem solving.

One of the portions of the presentation that I found most interesting came when he asked how many people in the audience could draw. Only one or two people out of several hundred raised a hand. Eric mentioned that pretty consistently, less than one percent of people in his adult audiences believe they can draw, but in high school classes, 10-12 percent of kids believe they can draw. Of course, when he asked how many children in a preschool audience would raise their hand when asked the same question, we all knew that every 4-year-old in the world believes he or she is an artist. Eric claims that painting and drawing are learned skills, but that they aren't skills that are taught or valued as much in our society, so at some point the budding artist in all of us is squelched. Anyway, it was an interesting presentation, and you can actually go to his website and see a some parts of his presentation on video if you're so inclined.

The evening concluded with some really good food at the Eldridge Hotel. That's the second time in the last month or so we've been to an event there with excellent food! It topped off a nice Friday night date with my wonderful husband!