How Community Brought My Creativity Back
- jrhrice
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
[NOTE FROM JAN: In June, I gave a hats-off to the organizers of Art in the Vines, an open-air art market at Qualusi Vineyards in Acworth, Georgia, one being the delightful Michelle Carpenter. So imagine my dismay when I discovered I ran photos and links to another artist named Michelle Carpenter, also delightful, but not the one I intended to spotlight. Given the givens, I asked the Michelle Carpenter with Modern Context if she’d write a guest post about her creative process. She said YES!]
SO NOW ... HERE'S MICHELLE with HOW COMMUNITY BROUGHT MY CREATIVITY BACK
For more than a decade, my artistic practice was mostly dormant.
Creativity still showed its face periodically—through personal home renovation projects or professionally in my marketing and strategic partnerships work—but I no longer thought of myself as someone with an active creative practice. Art was something I had once done, something I occasionally returned to, but not a consistent part of my life.
That began to change when I moved to Acworth, Georgia, after growing up in rural Michigan.
As I started settling into my new hometown, I found myself asking a simple question:
What if I actually knew my neighbors?
And then another:
What if participating in my community became my extracurricular?
Rather than treating community as something happening around me, I began looking for ways to take part in it. I attended local events, spent more time downtown Acworth, supported local businesses (over shopping online) and became increasingly curious about the people, places and organizations shaping Acworth.
Over time, the town began to feel less like the place where I lived and more like a place I belonged.
As my connection to the community strengthened, so did my inspiration and drive to create.
Classes at Acworth Arts Alliance’s Art House became an important part of that return. I explored—and still explore—a range of mediums, giving myself permission to experiment without needing to know exactly where it would lead. Those classes reignited my creative curiosity while also creating space for friendship and connection with both current and new friends.
(An art class is a great way to spend time with a friend, by the way.)
Eventually, I began spending more time creating. And when I looked for inspiration, I kept returning to the community that had helped bring my creativity back.
Now, as a printmaker and collagist (still working to fully commit to these labels confidently!), I create mixed-media pieces featuring some of the physical places that contribute to the quality of life in Acworth. These are not simply buildings or landmarks. They are gathering places, small businesses and familiar corners of town that hold stories, memories and relationships.
They are places where people meet for coffee, celebrate milestones, support one another and build a life together.
Creating work inspired by Acworth has changed the way I see the community. Art encourages me to slow down, look more closely and notice the details I might otherwise pass by. At the same time, participating in the community gives me more to notice.
The two practices continue to strengthen one another.
I used to think inspiration required getting away—traveling somewhere new, encountering unfamiliar places or stepping outside my normal routine. There is certainly value in all of those things. But I have also learned that inspiration for creation—from writing to painting and everywhere in between—can come from the world immediately around us.
All we have to do is look around and really see, and feel, what is there.
That may mean noticing the way light falls across a familiar building. It may mean listening to the story of a local business owner, paying attention to the rhythm of a neighborhood or recognizing the history held within a place you pass every day.
It may also mean noticing what happens inside you when you begin to participate.
For me, community involvement did not begin with a formal role or a clear plan. It began with curiosity. I showed up. I took classes. I attended events. I met people. I learned more about the place I had chosen to call home.
The deeper involvement came later.
Belonging was not something I found all at once. It grew through small, repeated acts of participation.
Take a class. Visit a local business. Attend a local event or city meeting. Introduce yourself to someone when you walk your dog.
Acworth did not simply become the subject of my artwork. Becoming part of Acworth, and the people who shape it every day, helped me become an artist again.
And it all began with one question: What if I knew my neighbors?
The next question: What if you knew yours?
Michelle is a strategic marketing and communications consultant with HL Strategy, artist and community advocate based in Acworth, Georgia. She serves on the board of the Acworth Arts Alliance and the City of Acworth public art committee, and explores the connections between creativity, community and place through her professional and artistic work.
View artwork on display in the members gallery and current exhibition at Acworth Arts Alliance’s Art House
To email her, copy and paste the following into your browser: michelle@moderncontext.co
You can also connect with or follow her through the social media links below:
Instagram: @moderncontext.co
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