Archives for October 2016

“ As artists, our job is to get people to enjoy their vision, instead of just using it to get around”

Maira Kalman Portrait

I love the work of Maira Kalman. I love the ideas of Maira Kalman such as  “I walk everywhere in the city. Any city. You see everything you need to see for a lifetime. Every emotion. Every condition. Every fashion. Every glory.” She sees the world as she walks. Maira records the moments most people don’t even notice and makes them beautiful.

Maira Kalman

The power of walking is a force of intellect, awareness and creativity to Kalman. Her illustrations are delightful impressions of what she notices as she walks the neighborhoods of New York. Artists like Kalman have long known there are two ways of seeing the world, seeing and noting objects as a nonartist or seeing the world as an artist by taking note of the colors, light, shapes, negative space. Kalman uses her vision to show us her world one drawing at a time. Her illustrations for The New Yorker, children’s books and books for the young at heart are imaginative, witty and so honest.

Maira Kalman

Kalman’s need for walking and movement as a gateway to a higher sensibility is something a number of great creators have in common. According to writer and blogger Maria Popova, Dickens and Hugo were avid walkers during times of creative thinking; Twain paced madly while dictating, Goethe composed on horseback; Mozart preferred the back of a carriage. Maybe there is something powerful about walking (or movement) leading to being present. In walking is there an effect that opens us up to observation? Do our minds flow into inner dialogue about what is in our field of vision, not realizing that ideas are beginning to take root.

Kalman’s daily life is her art. She sees walking as a suspension from all the things that are weighing her down. She walks and collects images of people, street fashion, dogs and in the end she may have something she would like to draw. She has made a career of daydreaming. ” Kahlman sees her job as walking, looking for things that feel natural. As she stated in a PBS interview, when creating from her observations, “this is really me and I don’t have to be anything else but myself, and that’s my job.”

I don’t want to trudge up insane

mountains or through war torn lands.

Just a nice stroll through hill and dale.

But now I walk everywhere in the city.

Any city. You see everything you

need to see for a life time.

Every emotion. Every condition.

If you are ever bored or blue,

stand on the street corner for

Half an hour.

I have a specialty of love-

old people who have difficulty walking.

I walk behind them and

quietly imitate their step.

My heart goes out to them.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Maira Kalman is the perfect example of “drawing attention to life.” What an inspiration! Check out her blog at kalman.blog.nytimes.com After doing that, go for a walk in your neighborhood and we might just pass each other!

“Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify”  Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt-Oblique Strategies

Oblique Strategy graphic

I love when I stumble upon something I had never heard about. My latest “stumble upon” came from a blog I was reading that mentioned “Oblique Strategies.” The other amazing thing was that I was reading this blog in a creative “dry period” that I have been experiencing since the studio open house from a couple weeks ago. Always amazing how things come to you when you need it.

Oblique Strategies originally was created in 1975 by musician Brian Eno and painter Peter Schmidt,  The strategies began as a box of index-sized cards for artists, made of cut up, discarded prints from Schmidt’s studio. Each card contains a (sometimes cryptic) remark that can help resolve a creative dilemma.

Oblique Strategy card deck

From wikipedia, quoting the introduction to the 2001 edition:

“These cards evolved from separate observations of the principles underlying what we were doing. Sometimes they were recognized in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack, or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear…”

Examples of strategies to intervene in a dry period include such thoughts as:

• Use an old idea.
• Are there sections? Consider transitions.
• Honor thy error as a hidden intention.
• Question the heroic approach.
• Only one element of each kind.
• Give way to your worst impulse.
• What to increase? What to reduce?
• Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate.
• Do we need holes?
• Decorate, decorate.
• Disciplined self-indulgence.
• From nothing to more nothing.
• Ask your body.
• Remove specifics and revert to ambiguities.
• Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance.
• Consider different fading systems.
• Tidy up.
• Simply a matter of work.
• Use fewer notes.
• What would your closest friend do?
• State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
• Try faking it!
• Honor thy error as a hidden intention.
• Ask your body.
• Work at a different speed.

I think I will decorate, decorate this weekend. Lets hope that it takes me out of my malaise for painting!

Check out the card deck or the app for your phone. Maybe the advice is not only about art blocks but life blocks as well!

Thanks for reading….