From the "Penn State News" website:

"Ceramicist Chris Staley, the 2012-13 Penn State Laureate and distinguished professor of art at the University, is discussing topics related to creativity and the intersection between art and life in a series of videos to be shared during the 2012-13 academic year, aiming to expand people's ideas on art and serve as a catalyst for further conversation."

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This video struck me because of Chris Staley's approach to mistakes, and in a bigger sense, failure. He discusses a hand-made ceramic cup he bought from an artist, and how he was drawn to a little blue speck on the cup, a small mistake.

I think many of us can relate to being drawn to these small imperfections, because it humanizes the object. This made me think about how there are so many things that affect our lives in a meaningful way, which only exist within our subjective experiences.

Yet, Chris Staley talks about his experience while teaching at the University, and how they have their annual reviews "and there's a sea of measuring and quantifying. And trying to, in many ways, validate ourselves."

"But life is so much more than that. Life is about feelings, and emotions, and how we connect with one another."

I think that so much of creativity is about externalizing the subjective experiences that live internally, often in an attempt to make connections with others. Much of our culture centers around productivity, which lends itself to quantitative measurements of someone's value or worth. But how can we even begin to attach the words "failure" or "success" to something so deeply human like creativity and artistic expression?