Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Make to Know: From Spaces of Uncertainty to Creative Discovery will change the way you think about creativity. The book upends popular notions of innate artistic and visionary genius and probes instead the event of discovery that happens through the act of making. In contrast to the classic tale of Michelangelo, who 'saw the angel in the stone', the artists and designers Buchman interviews for this book talk about knowing their work as they engage in the doing. Make to Know explores the revelatory nature of the creative journey itself.

As Buchman weaves together the vivid stories of his multiple conversations, we learn about writers of all stripes as they confront creative spaces of uncertainty - 'the blank page'; about visual artists and what they understand from the materials they encounter; about designers and architects and the iterative process of solving problems; and about actors and musicians facing the surprises of improvisational performance.

Make to Know is a book that will, ultimately, open a path to your own making, and, in the end, will have significant implications for how you live.

Make to Know presents a way of thinking that democratizes creativity and uncovers a process that leads to knowing both one's work and oneself. It is relevant to anyone interested in why creativity matters.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The book under review offers wisdom from an experienced arts administrator and creator. This reader anticipated finding out when "making to know" is most effective in the creative process, and how that answer might vary based on the maker's level of experience and the domain of the work. The author approaches this question best in discussion of the work of designers and in reconceptualizing arts education. Primarily, however, Buchman (ArtCenter College of Design) argues for make to know as the primary force in the creative process. When projecting applications to the K-12 education arena, he understandably promotes learning by doing. There could certainly be much more use of this strategy. However, discovery learning has not been shown to be as effectively applied to learning basic skills and content, especially within the constraints of the school day and the needs of diverse students. Making to know is most certainly an essential component of the creative process, but this reviewer believes its centrality is overstated, and wishes that a book that focuses on creativity in the arts would have provided a figural depiction of the process of making to know. Putting that picture together might have surfaced--and addressed--some of the gaps identified here. Summing Up: Optional. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students. General readers. --Rena F. Subotnik, American Psychological Association