Drawing Distinctions,

The following is an address to be given at the first session of a class at a school that as far as I know does not yet exist. Nor do I know who the students might be, or their circumstances. What I do know is that I’d like to be there, at the front of

Learning how to see

If we have relatively good eyesight it’s easy to think that’s all we need, “I know how to see! Just open my eyes and look!” One of the first lessons from learning to draw and paint was that I had no idea what was involved in seeing. Not just that I was lacking techniques useful

Drawn to Create

Drawing has a series of definitions. We tend to think of drawing as a form of representation or even simply a notation. It is also a physical act. Not only does the artist draw a line. The archer draws a bow and a blacksmith draws metal. Let’s look into this kind of drawing. It forms

“Changing Hearts and Minds”

Yesterday’s irony – intentional or otherwise – becomes today’s platitude. How is it that this one still has legs? How do we simply “forget” this phrase’s origins? When asked why the US military was bombing the shit out of Vietnam, the response, probably penned by a sweaty, beady eyed CIA operative, was “To change hearts

Retreat & Resilience

I was asked to look at these two terms as a simple request without any elaboration. This is an interesting way to enter into a form of dialogue. For the one asking it does not limit the answer to any preconceptions they might otherwise bring. For the one answering there is the wide open space

Creative Destruction

We’ve heard this term spouted by those who want a gloss of legitimacy to pour over the violence of their actions, the hollow emptiness of their motivations. Everything from firing workers to starting wars has been done behind the rationalization that it is creative to wield destruction, after all, without that Asteroid killing those big,

Utopia is nowhere. Dystopia brings forth our own worst fears.

Perseus and Medusa. Perseus is able to kill Medusa and use her head, with its power to turn all who gazed upon it to stone, to destroy Leviathan and free Andromeda. It’s just struck me in a very straightforward manner that there is a lesson to this tale, we might not have considered. I certainly

Sometimes…

Habits are powerful. When in the middle of a run of posts, it seems easy to just hit the keys and have another one spill out onto the screen. When the smooth flow is broken by events or, more precisely, by the way we react to events, then it can be difficult to get back

Making Sense

We all know what that means! What does it mean? To make is to put together. It’s not quite the same as create. Not as pedestrian as assemble. It does imply a matter-of-fact doing. The emphasis is on competence and taking things as they are and putting them together so the result will function as

Complicity and Contingency

We live somewhere in tension between complicity and contingency. It’s not a linear polarity, this space. These are not categories with any sort of rough equivalency. Complicity is a state. We are within a relationship to the forces that seek to destroy. Some of these we are aware of, others are hidden from us, some

Algorithms and Intention

Algorithms. While teaching a week-long course in half-model making and marine drafting I came across a tangible definition of an algorithm. In drafting we use splines, long, thin wooden battens that we bend around control points held by lead weights called ducks or whales. The shape, density and grain of the wood influences how it

Crafting Awareness

Skeins of various threads spiral around me. Their common center may be craft. Craft. It’s an interesting word. It seems straightforward enough at first glance but once we start to look more closely it expands. There’s a broadness to it. It means making. It also means a vessel that transports us. It denotes a variety