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Spark : How Creativity Works
Why did Richard Ford's childhood cat influence his work as a novelist? How is Chuck Close's portraiture driven by his inability to remember faces? What pivotal moment convinced Rosanne Cash of the healing power of the stage?
Creativity is an elusive subject. We enjoy its fruits -- movies, novels, paintings, songs -- but rarely are we privy to what happens during the creative process. In Spark, Julie Burstein traces the roots of some of the twenty-first century's most influential and creative thinkers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Yo-Yo Ma, David Milch, Isabel Allende, and Joshua Redman. Julie pulls back the curtain to reveal the sources of these artists' inspiration and the processes that bring their work into being.
"These artists may not change lead into gold," Julie writes, "but they lift materials from their familiar contexts, combining, reshaping, transforming them into works of art that change the way we see the world."