Summer 2016 Reading

Watercolor Study on the Seine, 2017

Fall is approaching.  Classes at the universities in my area have started.  Perhaps it is the reminiscences of years in academia that make me think of   ‘what I did during the summer’.   I had long hours of studio time investigating different types of painting supports for my upcoming artist residency during the month of September in France. http://www.camac.org

I read some newly published books that challenged, informed, and affirmed my work as an artist.  I share them here with quotes I found important to my studio practice.

The Storm of Creativity by Kyna Leski.   This is a jewel of a book.

“And from the initial raging storm, a gentle outcome, persistence and perseverance in gentleness.”

I am, like many others, astonished by the role the unconscious plays in the creative process – how ideas seem to spring from nowhere.  I had completely forgotten Ponge’s metaphor of a storm.  As you will see, forgetting, deliberate forgetting, or unknowing is a stage of the creative process.  Equally important and the opposite of forgetting is the effort to try and see ahead.  p. xxii

ways of curating  by hans ulrich orbrist.  This book is challenging and informative with a great history of curating.  It would be great to sit next to the author on a long transatlantic flight and converse with him.

– the task of curating is to make junctions, to allow different elements to touch.  You might describe it as the attempted pollination of culture, or a form of map-making that opens new routes through a city, a people or a world. p.1

 Better Living Through Criticism (How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty and Truth. by A.O. Scott

Aesthetic experience takes place in a crowd or in ecstatic isolation.  It is, in either case a series of discrete moments of contemplation and surrender.  p.44