ALL HALLOWE'EN Beware all creatures and beasties and things that go bump in the night How can Halloween not be an artist's favorite holiday? Out of all other holidays, none bespeak to your creativity like Halloween. Sure, you can find some new ways to decorate for Christmas or Chanukah or even a new way to serve up a Thanksgiving feast. But none of those call upon you to dig deep and find out what is scary. See, it's all mental, pure creative psychology. Sure there are a bunch of stereotypes that you can buy at the store like cobwebs in the corners of a room or a plastic bat in a window. But to get in touch with the real feeling of Halloween you have to actually find out not only what scares you but what scares everyone. Collective memory. Something that resonates back to a time when things that were truly bigger and stranger than man still roamed the earth. That is a lot more than just a plastic pumpkin and some candles. It's too easy to do scary by the numbers. To be actually scary requires more than relying on old standbys. But they can be fun too. From witches to ghosts. To even some sort of man on a horse that does not have a head (I wish there were any easier way to say that). But you need to remix it and make it unique. So of course a holiday that invokes craftiness as well as creative thinking is going to be my favorite.
