I remember my high school art teacher Tom King asking me if I could say peace without using the peace sign. That was a good lesson, though I didn't know how at the time(perhaps still don't). But it is important to push the idea and meaning of words, phrases and symbols beyond their meaning--both the meaning to me and the meaning they have in a universal sense.
I realized a few years ago that the world was far too big for me to understand and far too complicated for me to make commentary on that I'd then have to defend. I know my limitations and I know how clever wordsmiths are at making ones statements seem convoluted--even to oneself. Words is hard! I do stand behind that statement.
Then another professor began explaining art to me in a sense of poetry and even though I often interpret poetry wrongly(at least according to scholars) - I seemed to understand that. Our personal poetry is our personal look, our personal thoughts and our personal expressions.
In these we can make broad social or political statements, but when it comes down to it is within us and what can be interpreted by others is really only a small part of what it is ultimately about.
I discussed the other day with a student, in fact its a reoccurring discussion I've had with several students who get confused by how meaning comes into their work. "I came up with the idea because I thought it would look cool!" Or 'I made the piece and then I had to decide what it was about!'
These students felt frustrated because they thought this was wrong.
The creative process is something that does not have a point A or a point B. It is, like religious belief... there are so many approaches and ways of accomplishing the same basic thing... no one solution is 'the way!'
I'm always skeptical of artists who spend days and days thinking about the project without acting on it. Then when they do the work its basically illustrating what they thought of instead of working with the process and evolving the idea into something greater than the thoughts. These are illustrations of an idea, and not seeking the poetic experience that only comes from making and failing and fixing and making something really well only to ruin it and then fix it and then turn it into something good again.
Our way of coming up with ideas shouldn't be a burden to us, we should accept our way of making and allow this to aid us in making more.
I tell my students---if you come up with an idea and think that it will look cool--great. I'm sure you didn't come up with the visual completely void of knowing where it came from, you just have trouble understanding that where it came from is connected to some experience. You have to just understand that those experiences, your history, everything that you have come into contact with...most definitely has influenced how you came to think of your image or creation.
I think we often spend too much time as art educators talking about other artists, political and social agenda and not enough time talking about life around us, the subtle things...music, birds, rats collecting food and storing it away, our dogs, our friends and family and all those things we take for granted that are so influential in the way we think and act and breathe. From these things is where we get our creative process.
Another thing I try to remind students is this---getting an education in art does not make one an artist. You don't need school to become an artist. However, take advantage of being among people in art to understand how to discover within yourself your art. Don't copy, but take from others their knowledge and grow from it. Uneducated artists, those who don't study art and understand how to study based on personal needs(study an artist to learn what we need to know to make our own work) will have large spells of stagnation because they don't know how to find what they need to go to the next level in their work.
Art education at least allows us, if it is done correctly, to understand how to find the resources we need to move on with our work. How to understand the craft and application of the craft in our own work.
The best professors don't tell us what to make, or how to make it, they observe the work and try to offer ways to improve the work and when an art student is working well and really motivated--we try to not become a road block to them--and no---this is not easy. Often in trying to be helpful, we can get in the way.