“Everyday works of art” can take many forms, including the celebration of a special birthday.

Dennis Sparks/Contributor

I’ve always been drawn to people who create things through their imaginations and their hands—architects, builders, artists, crafts people, entrepreneurs, and planners, among others. I like to meet them in person or read their biographies and to see the products of their effort.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve been drawn back repeatedly to Michigan Radio’s Picture Project, particularly to the audio slideshow done by photographer Roy Feldman about artist Stephen Magsig’s “Postcards from Detroit” project and to the photographs by Dirk Bakker of depression-era Works Progress Administration art in Michigan libraries, schools, post offices, and other government buildings. In the first project an artist finds inspiration and beauty where many others only see decline and hopelessness. In the second, during a time of hardship and challenge, President Franklin Roosevelt’s vision and political talents combined with the skills of countless artists to create enduring works that have given pleasure to generations of viewers in towns throughout Michigan.

Creativity is a fundamental human impulse. It brings into existence that which would not otherwise exist—an elegant solution to a problem, a poem or play, a party or other special event, a political protest, and countless other manifestations of the urge to create.

And yet because we are “educating people out of their creative capacities,” as Sir Ken Robinson concludes, many of us do not view ourselves as creative or as creators. Creativity, many of us believe, is reserved for a special few, for people we think of as “artists.”

Creativity is not the exclusive domain of “artists”

While people create magnificent museums and parks and buildings, they also have imagined and brought into existence beautiful gardens, aesthetically-pleasing rooms, healthy and appealing meals, attractive clothing for themselves and loved ones, and many other examples of “everyday works of art,” a term I’ve borrowed from the title of a book by Eric Booth.

Perhaps most importantly, each of us plays a large role in creating the quality of our lives through our attitudes and the numerous choices we make every day that either enhance or diminish our joy and pleasure.

Booth explains it this way in The Everyday Work of Art: “Your positive future lies in your ‘work of art’; your skills, habits and practices, the way you choose to look at and engage with the objects and activities that fill your life,” a process that he claims allows us to “perceive the extraordinary in the ordinary.”

In addition, adults and children co-create families. Religious leaders and worshippers co-create spiritual homes. Teachers, principals, students, and parents co-create schools. And citizens co-create their neighborhoods and communities.

Creativity adds dignity to life and changes the world within and around us. It energizes and enriches the life of the creator through “flow experiences” and of the culture at large through the ideas and products it produces.

In what ways large and small, alone and with others, do you express your creative impulses? Dennis Sparks’ “Things Observed” photos and essays encourage readers to see familiar things in new ways. You can contact him at dennis.sparks@comcast.net.