G. Steve Journal

De-bullshytte-ify!

From boingboing.net:

Charlotte Young has produced an "artist's statement" video with handy subtitles intended to de-bullshytte-ify this often obscure literary form.

Artist's Statement

Flow

I was chatting with Terry Laughlin, founder and Head Coach of Total Immersion, which provides coaching to swimmers who are looking to improve.  Terry has always been very passionate about what he does - always looking to improve and constantly tweaking the techniques he teaches.

As we compared notes about our respective paths, I realized that although most people would consider swimming and photography to have little in common, the approach we bring to our endeavors couldn't be more similar -- an inquisitive outlook, an eagerness to explore new ways of experiencing how it's done and then how it can be done better.

At the end of the day, this outlook may be found in most successful practitioners of any enterprise.  One realizes that the activity itself becomes secondary to it's practice -- the practice transcends the literal and becomes an exercise in achieving a higher plane, regardless of the activity. Terry called it simply: "Flow."

Implicit, Not Explainable

There's a study making the news of late (NYT June 14, 2011) about how we bring others around to our way of thinking and it's getting some coverage due to the assertion that we, as humans, are inclined to put forth biased arguments, rather than reasoned ones, to make our case.

What I found of particular interest were the observations of Darcia Narvaez, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, who observes how reasoning has developed:

“...reasoning is something that develops from experience; it’s a subset of what we really know.” And much of what we know cannot be put into words, she explained, pointing out that language evolved relatively late in human development.

“The way we use our minds to navigate the social and general worlds involves a lot of things that are implicit, not explainable,” she said.

This is also an excellent description of how an artist navigates the world...

 

Dense Thickets

Here's an interesting conceptual art metaphor from a recent NY TIMES book review:

KELLY COYNE and Erik Knutzen... proselytize for a more self-reliant household in their new book, “Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World,” just published by Rodale.

The couple met at the University of California, San Diego, where Ms. Coyne had wandered into the dense thickets of conceptual art.

“By the time I graduated, I didn’t have any use for it anymore,” she said. “A graduate degree in art is a good way to get anyone to stop making art.”

You Want Meaning?

I just read a NY TIMES review of the book "Shadows Bright As Glass" about the strange but true tale of Jon Sarkin, a middle-aged chiropractor who, after having a stroke, becomes a prolific and successful artist. (http://jsarkin.com/art/)

Sarkin's obsessive artistic output seems to function as an outlet for thoughts and feelings he cannot otherwise express – art that springs from the same reflex that inspired the first cave painting.

So I was not surprised to read of Dr. Sarkin’s response to a fan who asked him what his art meant. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “You want meaning? Go get The Wall Street Journal.”