I’ve had friends who collected Star Wars toys and kept them in the original packaging to protect their value. This certainly protects the monetary value, but doesn’t it deprive you of getting everything out of that toy it was created for? If you want to spark your imagination, have a fun afternoon, and [...]

Most people have no idea what it takes to make good art, whether it’s music, film, painting or anything else. They don’t know how much training and study has gone into building the artist’s skills, and how much practice of that skill it took to allow them to make something, especially if it’s great. [...]

Seed Magazine investigates the blind spots of science’s latest frontiers, and how the limits of scientific method and unbiased observation are holding us back.
…before we can unravel these mysteries, our sciences must get past their present limitations. How can we make this happen? My answer is simple: Science needs the arts. We need [...]

Richard Florida’s latest book, Who’s Your City?, has a lot of interesting ideas. It is a continuation of his work which started with the often quoted, celebrated and vilified Rise of the Creative Class.
In essence, the original book argues that economic greatness in any given place depends on the place’s ability to attract creative [...]

I have all kinds of crazy dreams. I’ve had one of them for a long time, and I’ve never told anyone about it until now. Even for me it’s a nutty one. My secret dream was to be the first artist in space.
I had such a strong desire for this, I think, [...]

There are only certain places that blossom in that certain way that creates Bohemia. Crumbling and eroding but more glistening and alive than filmed dreams. Some generations there isn’t one, they grow slowly until them bloom, only one exists in the world every 30-50 years. New York in 1974 was the last [...]

I’ve just finished reading an illustrated autobiography that I’ll write more about later.
But it has me thinking. There are many people and places I’d like to know more about. Many times this kind of cultural learning and exchange happens through art. But where is the exchange when people aren’t allowed to express [...]

After yesterday’s post (Getting the right tools vs. actually doing something) I read this story in Wired. Instead of waiting on a $4,500 paraglider that he could likely never afford, he built one out of plastic bags. He could have died using it, but instead he became a world renowned paraglider, one of [...]

I read a New Yorker story recently about the cult of Leica cameras. Some of the most famous photographs in history have been taken with Leica’s, and photographers love them. But at $4,000+ a pop, you’d better really love it, and you’d hope it takes a great photo.
…as the camera has evolved over [...]

Inside Japan (a bit like Berlin), there aren’t really serious art collectors. Inside Japan, people like Murakami and Nara make their money by doing corporate identity (Vuitton, Roppongi Hills) or mass-producing souvenirs… Art is collapsed into the mass market. Galleries are often in department stores, and often show what we’d think of as commercial work; [...]

On large farms, sometimes only one crop is grown. Many times these crops are corn or soy beans. These crops are more lucrative because they are used in many processed foods and may be subsidized.
Small farms, on the other hand, often have many crops that rotate and change over the course of a [...]

I went to an afternoon of flat track roller derby, and even though it’s a sport, I could care less who won or lost. A lot of us were there to be entertained. Roller derby is dramatic and theatrical. Lots of players and whole teams have strong characters (whether real or mythical), [...]

Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St. John.
- Boris Pasternak, Russian author and Nobel Prize winner
A post I ran across on the blog Offscreen Space.

A common view of people involved in meditation of any kind is that they’re wimpy. They live in the clouds and forests among birds and silence, stay in big quiet stone buildings and don’t do much that actually affects the world. They’re just not realistic. “That’s nice and everything, you’re not hurting [...]

There is so much writing in the world, so much crap to slog through in an already hectic life. For a long time I thought adding another blog to the world would just add more noise.
But I’m an artist and I love art. For a long time, through various incarnations – dreams of [...]