How Are You Creative?

“I always like freestyling, whether it’s music or break dancing, which I recently picked up,” says Isaac Yi, a recent Getty visitor.

“I really like it because you get to improvise and express yourself in different ways without being constrained by things like choreography. So yeah, that’s how I stay creative,” Yi says.

On a recent spring day, we asked Yi and other Getty Center visitors how they stay creative and find inspiration.

Here's what they had to say.

Nature Inspires Me

Aileen Castañeda: I am a poet with my hands; I find figures in clay. They just come out. Nature inspires me. And light; if you don’t have light, you don’t get to see the shadows, the depth, the three-dimensionality. That’s one of the most important things in my work—having the shadows and the three-dimensional forms.

Integrated Circuits

Xiangdong Jia: I design integrated circuits [a collection of electronic components (resistors, transistors, capacitators, etc.) that are assembled onto a tiny chip and connected to achieve a common goal]. It’s kind of like making art, because you’re building from the very basic to multiple layers, and you’re creating stuff that’s most likely never been done by other people. I like it.

Stories and Characters

Natterra Bennett: I like to draw characters and come up with stories for them. I really like drawing people; even their clothing and how they sit tell a story. I like capturing that and putting that into my own characters and designs.

Dance and Movement

Eldad Golub: I find catharsis in movement and in dancing. It just feels good, and I feel creative there. I feel like I have fewer boundaries and that I can improvise. And that’s creativity for me.

Music and Biology

Alejandro Cañas Rangel [left]: I really like putting on my headphones and listening to music and then taking pictures. I focus on shapes, colors, and something really abstract that grabs my attention and makes me feel powerful.

Guillem Seuba Pablo [right]: The way I get myself inspired to be creative is through nature. My first dream is to study biology, and I really like to just simply watch plants or animals and how they manage to survive in their environment. Nature was creative in giving them characteristics to adapt there. A cactus is really creative, for example. It has really creative shapes, really creative leaves, and those are just ways of surviving. Nature really inspires my own creativity and the adaptations I make in my own life.