Creativity Quote by John Hench

"It was supposed to be" is the tell: this is a sentence built on the soft ruins of a plan. John Hench, an artist who spent his career inside big, collaborative institutions (most famously Disney’s design culture), is describing a creative ecosystem where the future is always provisional and the past is never quite dead. The line sounds casual, almost shruggy, but it’s really a philosophy of production disguised as small talk.

The specificity of "the second street project for Main Street" matters. Main Street is already a curated nostalgia machine; a "second street" suggests the hidden scaffolding behind the facades, the alternate routes that guests don’t see. Hench is talking about those backstage ambitions: concepts drafted, budgeted, debated, then quietly shelved when priorities shift. "But who knows?" isn’t indecision so much as institutional realism. In large-scale public art, the timeline isn’t driven by inspiration; it’s driven by politics, money, safety codes, leadership changes, and whatever crisis arrives next.

"We never throw away any idea" is the emotional punch. It reframes abandonment as incubation. The subtext is both hopeful and strategic: creative labor isn’t wasted if it can be refiled, re-skinned, and resurrected when conditions allow. There’s also an implicit critique of the romantic myth of the lone artist. Hench’s world runs on archives, iteration, and reuse - an artist’s imagination disciplined by a company’s memory.