I don’t take many days off – I don’t mean like sick days, or weekends though, I mean days out of my studio where I clear my head of what’s going on in the shop and instead broaden my creative horizons: I know I’m bad at this, I know it’s something I should do more of, and yes – I know that not only do I have the time to do this, but I must actually do this thing for my own personal well-being.
Simply put, you can’t create in isolation – it’s not healthy for your soul, it’s not healthy for your work and it’s not healthy for your skillsets: because while you’re stuck in your own bubble you’re ignorant of new trends, methods and ways of working.
So today, inspired somewhat by having recently read and then obsessively re-read and re-listened to Adam Savage’s amazing new book Every Tool’s A Hammer, I decided to engage with other creatives, and hopefully learn or be inspired by the work of the masterful Stanley Kubrick.
Now I have been a Kubrick fan for as long as I can remember – he’s up there in my top three with Guillermo del Toro and Quentin Tarantino of directors who capture light and life with a level of obsessiveness that appeals to my own creative passions – so I consider it a huge honor to be able to lift the veil on the processes of his work, and I knew that I just had to spend the afternoon absorbed in the Kubrick Exhibition at the Design Museum in Kensington.
Boy oh boy, if you’re a Kubrick fan, or a fan of film generally, this is an exhibition you shouldn’t miss, I spent all afternoon gushing over meticulously constructed props, endless reams of hand-written production notes, insane lenses and edit rigs that brought his ideas to life and of course the thousands of archive photos of productions.
I cannot recommend this exhibit enough, which runs until the 17 September here in London, go do yourself a favor, set your creativity alight right now.