Native American weir Consciousness is a weir. What gets snagged in the watery carapace of life flowing through us often has meaning that is very particular and specific. It’s a bit like dreams, those cinematic wonders that are designed for and about only us. The wisdom that gets caught in our consciousness weir is a […]
Creativity
The Sweet Unheard
Of all the poets who delve into writing, creativity and the nature of art making, Jane Hirshfield is the closest to my way of seeing things. I go back to her books over and over again. Now another to add to my library: Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise: Three Generative Energies of Poetry. These three essays were […]
- Creativity
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Perennial Uncertainty
Vapeerine 3, from a new painting series Most of us know that feeling of rubberbanding: the rapidity with which you can move from loving what you are doing to finding it completely unacceptable. The writer Anne Lamott (who has written in depth about writing itself in books like Bird by Bird) advises her Twitter followers […]
Unleashing the Wandering Mind
Heron on the beach at Small Point, Maine _____ Note to my readers: As I head back up to Small Point, I reread this post from two years ago. That beach, that heron, that quiet—they are all still there, waiting to encompass any and all. I’ll be back Slow Musing at the end of next […]
- Creativity
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Witness Uganda: Expanding the Stage
Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews of Witness Uganda (Photo: Jimmy Ryan of the Boston Globe) Authenticity has become a critical factor in an age when so much isn’t. Who could have guessed 20 years ago that a huge category of television would emerge called “reality TV” that uses “found” participants but is as orchestrated and […]
- Creativity
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Self Revealing
The infinite fascination of waterdrops Simple but useful wisdom for art making practitioners… When asked for screenwriting tips, Greta Gerwig—actor, director and screenwriter—shared these two. As is often the case, her advice is useful for anyone engaged in a creative venture. *** Whenever you have an “idea,” as in a concept that you could explain […]
- Aesthetics
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The Innovation/Creativity Continuum
Innovation is constantly in the news. Corporations spend millions of dollars fostering, cultivating and encouraging it in work environments that often seem inhospitable to deflected and unexpected thinking. Interestingly, artists rarely use the word innovation to describe the methodology of their work. Creativity is the more common term. How are the two different? Drew Marshall […]
Handmadeness
Denis Dutton, the recently deceased author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times a few years ago in response to the auctioning of one of Damien Hirst‘s infamous medicine cabinets: The pricey medicine cabinet belongs to a tradition of conceptual art: works we admire […]
- Creativity
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Quiet Please
Door into my zone of privacy, my studio I know, it is easy to feel a bit of smuggish pleasure when an above-the-fold article in the Sunday New York Times articulates just what you have been saying for years.* Certainly I am not the only artist out there voicing advocacy for the way of solitude. […]
- Art Making
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Ways of Working
At some level, everything is of interest to the eye…a view of one corner of my studio space How do artists work? In a recent posting on Real Clear Arts, Judith H. Dobrzynski makes the case that as mysterious as the creative process is, it is that which people most want to know. And that […]