There’s a reason bank buildings are square. There’s a reason that when we need rest we go to a large body of water… or the desert. There’s a reason web designers use lots of white space. (Space allows readers’ eyes — and brains! — to stay calm so they can absorb the material.) There’s a [ Read more … ]
beauty
Our world needs the artist’s cognitive capacities
The physicist Arthur Zajonc says that our culture needs the artist’s cognitive capacities. But what ARE those cognitive capacities? Perhaps those capacities include the artist’s willingness to be confused, welcoming any unlikely connection that shows up. Perhaps it’s his or her sensitivity to nuance and qualities of beauty that others miss. Perhaps artists are more [ Read more … ]
Art is love ~ Paul Reynard
The artist Paul Reynard wrote: “A work of art is necessarily incomplete. It is a way of learning.” We’re all in this process of art-making, whether we think of ourselves as artists or not, because we’re all learners. Reynard was asked before he died, “What is the place of art in contemporary life?” He responded, [ Read more … ]
Beauty, growth, and higher vision are what actually matter.
If we want a new world, we need to listen to what has life.
If we want a new world, we need to learn how to listen to what has life. What does it mean to listen to what has life? Or, we could ask, what does it mean to say something is “alive”? Here is my definition of what is alive: People who are buzzing with gifts to [ Read more … ]