And in Jones County, Mississippi

a show of works by

Rowan Haug, Robert Ring, and me:

 (I keep forgetting I have the pano feature on my phone. Please forgive the patchwork!)

 
 

  

Shape of a Pocket went up in

The 505 Union

in Jonesboro, AR this weekend:

My mother is on a one-year retreat.

She is staying at a convent.

She lives in a simple cabin,

in the woods,

with her dog.

She has begun to paint again.

For Valentine's Day,

she sent her grandson

a sling shot that she made.

Here is the kind of note she sends to me via text or email,

in the course of her solitary days:

"I wish you could see the sky right now, indigo gray.

Would say tornado were I in Kansas.

And the really big high wind in the trees is just plain exciting,

seems to talk with itself--

first here,

then there,

then somewhere I don't know,

round and round."

"I bought a small saw at Lowes to size the sling shot;

the rubber band is the interior of a headband from Walmart;

the fabric for the pouch is part of a Stephanie Brown weaving,

the chord is from my sweat shirt.

"That's my story, loved doing it."

"Practical and valuable knowledge: to walk for one hour burns
2.5 times more calories than walking 45 minutes.

Just briskly, nothing super serious.

It's the hour, not how fast, that charges the metabolism."

It's the hour, not how fast. . . .

One Night Only, February 13, 2015

Hank Washington
Aubrey Pohl
Katie Erickson

Hal Boerner

One Night Only / Spring 2015 launches this Friday!

There's a wonderful quote from Benjamin Franklin:

"There are three sorts of people in the world.

Those who are immovable. . .those who are moveable. . .and those who move."

- Sir Ken Robinson

How to Escape Education's Death Valley

TedTalk, April 2014

MSU FIBER AND PAPER ARTS CLUB

January 2015 Activities

Tomorrow in FPA, we will build a 3D digital model

to take over to The Factory next week where

Bryan Patton will vet each design

and select the best for a 1 cu. in. 3D print.

Each Wednesday, FPA offers a simple skill-building product.

Here is a look back on activities of the last three Wednesdays:

By the way, the arts aren’t just important because they improve math scores,

they’re important because they speak to parts of children’s beings

which are otherwise untouched.

-Sir Ken Robinson

How to Escape Education's Death Valley

TedTalk April, 2013

The Ludic Moment

Most often, entrepreneurship is framed as a West Coast, technology–driven vehicle for innovation and profit. The product developer in this scenario is often an engineer, his or her work channeled by market vision or need and supported by venture capitalism.

This is a limited vision of entrepreneurship and one that does not acknowledge the full potential of the discipline. In “Art Production Beyond The Art Market?,” art historian and artist Caroline Jones discusses the problematic model in which “research is instrumentalized toward an existing paradigm,” either looking for new ways to meet the same old needs or deploying the same old processes in the face of new challenges.

Jones argues for an injection of artistic process in research and development. This begs the definition of artistic practice, and Jones answers in part with the “ludic moment” – a stage of spontaneity and undirected play.

What if we not only step away from existing paradigms, but also, for a moment, strip away the push to instrumentalize process in the first place? What if, on the way to usefulness, we engage in seemingly useless activities? What if we start with Play?

Artists are very good at this.

We explore things all the time that the market might consider pointless.  We explore not only the possible, but the seemingly impossible, and even the seemingly useless.

Now, the ludic moment is a stage. If we stay forever in the ludic moment, we literally starve to death. But if we never engage it, we fail to thrive.

While working closely with project architects in designing sculptural aspects of the Getty Museum grounds, artist Robert Irwin said that if architects are going to call themselves artists, then he should be free to call himself an architect. These days, people who think independently and take risks in any field might be crowned “artists” and this is reasonably offensive to trained artists.

But if we leave titles out of it, and inspect process, we see that artists, engineers, business people, leaders – anyone involved in revolutionary thinking - all engage the game of aesthetics.

I am borrowing here a definition of aesthetics given by Erik Demaine, Professor in Computer Science at MIT. He refers to the aesthetics of math as a realm in which a concept is pursued for its intrinsic beauty, without regard for its application. This is a sound starting point for innovation. Eventually, innovation must pass the test of application. But first, we must play. Seriously.

There is a high failure rate in discovery and innovative practice.  Many ideas do not survive outside of the ludic moment. But to instrumentalize the ludic moment is to try to arrive before heading out the door. To stop before starting.

Entrepreneurship acknowledges the likelihood of failure – it relishes failure as a learning tool. Rapid prototyping is essential so that flawed ideas, products, or services can fail quickly and provide feedback to the larger initiative, whatever that might be.

Arts-based entrepreneurship goes a step further. In a collaborative, inter-disciplinary environment biased toward action and a search for meaningful application and visionary perspective, arts-based entrepreneurship supports the ludic moment.

First curatorial project of 2015 is up and running! I am so thankful to

Letitia Quesenberry
Tim Barnes
and
Tim Feeney

for sharing their time and talent generously and graciously.