Effable/ineffable: Fresh perspectives on the sociology of creativity (New York)

In my dissertation, I examine the creative process as it is described by artists themselves. I use interviews with, and observation of, thirteen more and less well-known New York City artists to research the interconnected lifeworlds of artists. My research design was intended to access multiple facets of artists' lives: their artistic training; their social and artistic environments; their creative processes and the ways they talk about these processes; their artworks and the ways they talk about these artworks; and the ways they talk about how their creations are related to their intentions as artists. The central impetus of my research design was the consideration of the more subtle elements of the creative process commonly ignored or dismissed in the discipline of sociology. My analysis resulted in three significant areas of original scholarship: strategies around background, environments, legitimacy and work; choices about identity and creativity; and inducted ways of thinking about and enacting creative work. I conclude that most of the so-called ineffable aspects of creativity are at once socially constructed and mediated by unique individuals in situations; more infrequently they remain indescribable. I locate this residual ineffable not in artists or in inspiration but in the liminal space between conception and execution of artworks.