The Shift from Making Things to Making Meaning
Why the most important work happens before the work even begins
For generations, art education has focused on outcomes like finished pieces, exhibitions, portfolios, and résumés. The idea has been straightforward and practical—create something you’re proud of, share it, and then move on to the next project. There’s really nothing wrong with that approach. Craftsmanship, skill, and discipline are important. The rich traditions of making are truly valuable and worth holding onto.
What if the most crucial part of your creative journey happens even before you start creating anything? Think about how this early phase can set the tone and inspire your work in meaningful ways.
Cindy Foley’s work provides a valuable and much-needed fresh perspective. She encourages us to move our attention from the product itself to the process—focusing less on objects and more on the meaning behind them. Not meaning in an abstract, philosophical way, but meaning as a lived experience: how ideas come to life, develop, and take shape through thoughtful reflection.
In other words, creativity isn’t just about what you create. It’s also about how you think. Embracing this view can inspire you to explore new ideas with confidence and curiosity.
Creativity as a Set of Mental Habits
Foley shares that creativity isn’t just about talent or inspiration; instead, it’s about a set of mental habits—ways we engage with the world that help spark imagination and bring about new ideas over time.
Some of the important habits she shares include:
Asking better questions, exploring multiple possibilities, reframing problems, connecting unrelated ideas, and learning through iteration—these are all wonderful ways to grow and develop your skills. Embracing these approaches can make your journey more engaging and rewarding. This list reads less like an art syllabus and more like a philosophy of living. And that’s precisely the point. Creativity, in this view, isn’t a special activity reserved for studios and galleries. It’s a way of moving through uncertainty, complexity, and change.
This really hits home, making it relevant not just for artists but for everyone trying to think clearly in a chaotic world.
The Real Action Happens Before the Object
In practice, this framework reflects what many artists naturally understand instinctively.
The most exciting part of creating art isn’t necessarily finishing with that final brushstroke or the last kiln firing. Instead, it’s the magical moment right before your work comes to life—when your idea is still taking shape, a little rough around the edges, but bursting with promise and endless possibilities.
That early phase is truly where the magic happens. It’s the time when you’re testing out new ideas that might not work, feeling uncertain about what the project really needs, trusting your instincts instead of a detailed plan, and making decisions without knowing exactly what will happen next. Though it can be uncomfortable and may feel inefficient, remember, this is the very space where meaningful progress is created.Foley points us toward this moment not as something to rush through, but as something to cultivate. The goal isn’t to get to the object faster—it’s to stay longer in the space where thinking is still fluid and possibilities are still open.
From Product Culture to Process Culture
This change carries more significance than it may initially appear. In a product-oriented environment, the focus is on qualities like polish, certainty, efficiency, and external validation. Meanwhile, a process-oriented culture cherishes curiosity, experimentation, embracing ambiguity, and maintaining internal coherence. The first perspective asks, “Is this good enough to show?” while the second explores, “What is this trying to become?”That’s a radically different question.
And it’s one that aligns closely with contemporary creative practice—especially in interdisciplinary, conceptual, and research-driven work. The artist becomes less a producer of objects and more a designer of meaning systems: someone who builds frameworks for exploration rather than artifacts for consumption.
Why This Matters Now
In a world filled with so much content, rapidity, and automation, it’s quite simple to produce more things. However, creating meaningful work is a different story. It truly needs your attention, time, reflection, and a readiness to embrace not knowing what you’re doing at first.Foley’s perspective offers a kind of quiet resistance to the pressure of constant output. It legitimizes the invisible work: the thinking, the sketching, the false starts, the wandering conversations, the conceptual dead ends that never make it into a portfolio—but shape everything that does.
Or put more simply: The work before the work is still the work. It’s this part that’s really worth protecting, nurturing, and designing with care—especially if we care about more than just what we create, but also about why we’re creating it in the first place.
Hands to clay, eyes to the future.
