Transcending Creative Poverty

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A fellow student of advertising proclaimed “This isn’t art school, Thibodeau!”

He was right. It was ad school. 

But, that comment bugged me.

That wasn’t the intention. It was said more as a joke. Even still, it’s stuck with me all these years. 

I did the art school thing. Since grade school, art was the class and curriculum where I was noticed and looked up to. Not being a great academic student, art was MY thing. 

Kids looking over my shoulder, wishing this was a project THEY could cheat on. 

Teachers wondering how this child could draw like THAT. 

In fact, I almost didn’t win my second grade Halloween poster contest. 

A teacher pulled me out of class into the hall before announcing the school winner over the intercom. 

“Did your dad draw this poster for you?”

My dad was a known award winning editorial cartoonist for the newspaper where we lived. 

“No,” I replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” 

I was both insulted and flattered.

I was told to go back to my class. 

Moments later, over the loud speaker, I was announced the winner—a second grader in a K through 5th grade school. 

Years later, naturally, I studied painting, drawing and printmaking in college. Both undergrad and grad, before pivoting into advertising at the VCU Brandcenter. 

Was I in the right place?

Did I betray my inheritance? Had I defiled my gift? 

In Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, he writes,

“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place.”

Art is wherever you are. It’s whereever you decide to conjure it. Art is Grace, waiting to be accepted, appreciated and live in. 

This fellow student was wrong. 

Ad school was art school. 

I approach all things with this mindset. I experiment widely to this day—encouraging myself, students, teams, and my kids to maintain an dynamic curiosity. 

This video is of a few assemblages I created. While making these, I could hear my son in the background practing HIS creative craft. Felt right to overlay my artistic rehearsal with his.

Like poetry. 

Experimental Assemblage by b. thibbs