Creatively Thinking

  Featured image: Rainbow Bird “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.” – William Faulkner

 Featured image: Spring Dance “I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it.” – Twyla Tharp

  Featured image: Traveling II “I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” – Glenn Gould

  Featured image: Pot of Flowers “Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.” – Jim Henson

  Featured image: What If A Bird Doesn't Sing “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear.”— John Cage

  Featured image: Canna Lily “The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.” — Wassily Kandinsky

 Featured image: Celebrate Innovation “Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot see physically with his eyes.” — Arshile Gorky

  Featured image: Nature's Truth Rich earth, remarkable trees… woods, sky, nature. They offer a healing that is a natural process, something that goes beyond anything reasonable. And yet, it gives you a remarkable, comfortable, real sense of satisfaction and strength—a gift that helps fill you from within, if you allow it to. And the wonderful, glorious thing about nature is that it is always there. It can always be there, no matter what color it is, no matter what state it is in. It can always give you strength. It can always fill those empty spaces in your heart, if you allow it to. The sounds nature makes, or the sounds it does not make, become part of the alchemy—that magical transformation between you and nature. It is always mysterious and transformative, changing the ordinary into something very wonderful for you. Really, you make this transformation yourself, if you are simply silent and listen to all those sounds around you. Far away, the green leaves twist with the wind. ...

  “There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who… transform a yellow spot into a sun.” — Pablo Picasso Featured image: Checking Things Out

  Featured image: Tree, Tree, Tree Trees Early morning, it is a nice time to speak to the trees and connect to them and they to me as we together connect to the sky and the earth and start our day. Listening to the wind twisting the leaves in the aspen trees. I can’t imagine not being able to hear this sound in the mornings. I can’t imagine not being able to see the leaves twist with the wind, and hearing this sound and this movement. They are such a blessing. They are so beautiful to me. You are so beautiful To me You are so beautiful To me Can't you see You're everything I hoped for You're everything I need You are so beautiful To me — “You Are So Beautiful,” written by Billy Preston and Bruce Fisher Earth. Trees.

  Featured work: Airplane sculpture In the new work I have been creating, the word assemblage has been creeping into my vocabulary. So it makes sense that I began reviewing the history of “assemblage” in the arts. Needless to say, I also ran across the word in academia. I shouldn’t be surprised—but I kind of was. AI briefly states that assemblage theory was developed by two Frenchmen—of course—Deleuze and Guattari, and then popularized by Manuel DeLanda. They view assemblage theory as social and material reality as fluid groupings of heterogeneous elements rather than fixed entities. Assemblages are formed by interactions between people, objects, and ideas, creating properties greater than their parts. But artists already knew that. Assemblages are the relational system of things, practices, habits, bodies, concepts, and environments that give rise to an emergent and coherent logic. The first assemblage artists I came across were Louise Nevelson and Robert Rauschenberg. I ask myse...

  Featured image: What Lies Beneath Stepping over the line—most of the time, we are led to believe that isn't a good thing. That is the bottom line. But for me, like so many things in life, not everything is as it first appears. Stepping over that line—be it red, purple, orange, yellow, or blue—is the place where discovery and adventure begin. It is stepping outside my comfort zone and into the playground. It is where true growth happens. It is the place of being on the edge. And it is where the light of your potential and mine awaits. Perhaps that is simply another way of thinking about stepping over that red line.