Art and Sport
With Olympic fever all around, we recently asked Transformit's "team captain", Cindy Thompson, about the relationship between art and sports.
When you were a high school teacher, you taught art, and you were the coach of the girls track team. What do sports and art have in common?
Sports and art both require you to use your mind and your body at the same time. Everything that we do in art, and in sports, is learned through repetition and practice. Sports and art also share an intensity of experience: getting “into the zone” is something that happens in art as much as it happens in sports.
How is that different from other kinds of work?
Sitting at a keyboard is not exactly physical. Our minds learn from our bodies. Both art and sport relate to the creative force that is in each of us. Tapping into that force, that zone is something that every creative person learns to do. That is not just about the mind, it's about the whole being.
It seems that art is an individual activity, and while sport is sometimes individual, it's often a teamwork thing. Is there a teamwork aspect to creating art?
Certainly some kinds of art are solo activities, but performance art, and installation art like we do here at Transformit is definitely a team effort. There is no way I could do my art without my team. Even in solo art, and in individual sports, there is always an interactive element. Communication with others is always necessary, and social media can't do the job completely. Sometimes you actually have to have a conversation with someone.
What about responsibility and ownership?
In art and sports you have to own what you do. You can't push responsibility off onto others, or hide behind anyone.
What about cheating?
Well, you can probably cheat on everything in life, but it's hard to cheat in art, and it's hard to cheat in sports. When I had to turn in an art project, there was no getting around it: it had to be done. Running a race, you have to run. Nobody can do it for you, and you can't copy anyone.
Do you think that's what makes sports so attractive?
I think it's the authenticity, the surprise, the physical-ness of the human thing that you're doing, that people love. They love the surprise, the unexpected. That's what makes both art and sports intense, and exciting to do.
Remember that watching sports and looking at art are nice, but they are a long way from playing sports and making art! There are so many tasks now where the mind and the body are separated. When the mind and body are engaged together, people feel fulfilled.
