Months ago, there was a wonderful piece in the New York Times. Written by Lisa Carver from her book Reaching Out with No Hands: Reconsidering Yoko Ono. It has really stayed with me. An excerpt from this article talked of two schools of art. "One is what is made beautiful by the artist... to make something unreachably special with skills. The viewer or listener is awed, their belief regarding the order of things is confirmed and they are reminded by this unachieveable beauty of their own powerlessness... The other way to make art is to tear down what's between us and nature, us and eternity, us and the realization that everything is already perfect."
I believe there may be a middle ground. I won't begin to suggest that I have such unreachable skills, nor do I believe in making one powerless but I do believe in working with the ordinary and making something "extraordinary". That perhaps my work not only reminds us that we are surrounded with beauty but that the most important skill is not technical ability that humbles, but visual ability that empowers. To be able to see the perfection hidden in the ordinary. It is so easy to take the world around us for granted: our health, our loved ones, our freedoms. To be able to see things as new is to be able to look past the daily distractions. This is how to stay present. This is how we live fully. I think this is one of the reasons we seek to surround ourselves with art.
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