Creative Inventiveness

By Jennifer Mains

Published June 1996

When I first read the cover article “Conserving Communities” by Wendell Berry, I was provoked by the statement that promoters of a global economy be­lieve “the industrial standards of produc­tion, efficiency, and profitability are the only standards that are necessary.” I agree with Berry that these standards are destructive and unsustainable and that they are not the “only” standards. I would like to expand upon Berry’s argu­ment, to include the alternate standard of creative inventiveness, an old art and I believe an instinctive one which many of us are fast losing.

There have been three occasions in my life where I have been struck by the instinctive ability of human beings to creatively invent the necessary tools from the world around them. Having been very thoroughly indoctrinated with the post-war standards of “newer, bigger, and purchased”, exposure to the value of “reused, small and found” was rather revolutionary and inspiring!

My first encounter as an adult with this creative inventiveness was in a small, rural schoolyard. The playground was a scraped-out driveway, the only level part of the schoolyard, which was surrounded by the rocky outcrops and patches of grass. Young children are re­nowned for discarding brightly coloured, carefully designed toys for a simple card­board box or a wooden spoon–so this story is not new. The children had taken small rocks, sticks and stones and mapped out the floor plan of an intricate castle. Rains washed away their designs, cars drove over them, but every recess and lunch hour they would rush out to reconstruct their castle. Over the weeks, as I watched them play out various plots of murder, intrigue and conquest, I, too, saw the tall castle walls, the turrets flying their flags and, when invited into its walls, carefully walked over the bridge, wary of the dangerous moat below. There was no destructive competitive­ness in their game. Improvements, addi­tions and renovations were joyfully in­cluded and celebrated by the children. This is a nostalgic story but also an ex­ample of what we might be praising and encouraging in our children — their in­stinctive ability to take found objects and create and to celebrate these inventions.

The second occasion where I have been instructed in the art of creative inventiveness was when I lived in out-port Newfoundland during the 1970s. We drove up a winding road in the woods to a small logger’s mill. There, parked tightly beside the mill’s walls was a rusting old car. With my bedroom-community, Ontario sensibilities this rusting car was litter, destroying the beauty of this wilderness setting. I later learned that the car was an inexpensive source of power for the mill, the belts of the saw ran off the rear end of the car. Someone had the insight to see beyond its rusting carcass. During the years I lived there, I was continually encounter­ing examples of creative inventiveness—the axel and gear box of an old car erupting through the deck of a fishing boat where it was used to haul up fishing nets, the nets winding past the tire still on the rim, a stable torn down when the horse was sold would resurrect, in part, as a neighbours wood shed; or the chain, gear and wheel of a discarded bicycle transformed into the steering mecha­nism of a single engine fishing boat (tire still on the wheel). What was most as­tounding to me, beside these often star­tling resurrections of found materials was the way people would quietly acknow­ledge and praise the others’ inventiveness–their “good eye” and that this praise was not tinged with competitive jealousy.

The final story of creative inven­tiveness I would like to share is about a close friend who works as a milliner with various theatre groups. Theatre compa­nies with larger budgets have given her costly fabrics imported from Europe, an­tique ribbons and lace to create period hats. But the hats that have given her the most joy and caused me the most wonder are those that she has created from the bits and pieces of scraps. I have often wandered into her workplace and seen her surrounded by scraps of materi­als, ribbons and laces hauled out from storage in her basement. They are often not the exact colour or texture, but with a practiced eye she combines ordinary, often dowdy and unrelated fabrics into the hats that evoke the grandeur of the original drawing. The industrial stand­ards of productivity, efficiency and prof­itability have no influence in the crea­tion of this work or in the amazement of the onlooker when they realize that the rich, textured band around the hat is a humble scrap of beige eyelet.

In this present culture of “post everything” standards we do not recog­nize the creative inventiveness that sur­rounds us. My stories are only a few examples. Who is celebrating the creative inventiveness of surviving without a job, creating a home for children on subsistence wages or pedaling around town on a bike, without the ten gears and gel seat? My fear is, that with the disappearance of rural societies (as we have known them) which have always been rich in the tradition of creative inventiveness, we will further lose the ability to celebrate this inventiveness–and what will sustain us?