Some shameless self-promotion today...I have long encouraged people to create their own definition of Art, and then move enthusiastically with that vision to create what moves them. I have been doing this for my entire life, in many domains — so many domains, in fact, that I have been questioned about my dedication to any particular domain, and challenged with respect to my seriousness.
I took up the challenge to define myself, and it has taken me three years of studying and soul-searching, plus six months of non-stop writing and editing to finally do so. The common thread that unites all my interests appears to be design.
I wanted to be an artist, so this came as a bit of a shock. Having been brought up with the belief that Art is superior to Design, I kept thinking that if I applied myself to discovering my voice, then I would be able to create Art.
I discovered, though, that Art can not exist in the absence of design. Art is well-conceived and well-crafted. It achieves a mission, and through it the artist causes her audience to experience a shift in perspective. Design — even when its principles are applied intuitively and unconsciously — is inherent in the process of assessing and responding to all constraints, the media employed, the methods of work, refinement of vision, through to execution and presentation of the finished work. And design is so little talked about, so poorly understood, so frequently denigrated that it took me fifty years to recognize that design is the unifying field of my life's work. I may have created something artistic along the way — that is for other's to decide — but my passion is ignited by analyzing, visualizing, conceptualizing, realizing — in short, design!
Armed with this theory, I took a trip through all the many kinds of things I have created over my entire lifetime — disparate fields of photography, computer software, art, landscape, furniture, business plans, and music — tracing details, puzzles, questions, relationships, observations and intentions and the ways in which they informed my entire body of work. I wrote a book which conceptually began as a portfolio. It evolved through its essays, drawings, photographs, digital montages, typography and examples. I believe it illuminates what I've come to think of as the art of design.
I throw a little world-saving in there, too, just because we can never have enough of that.
Please take a look. It is a big 12 x 12 book printed by Blurb on luscious paper. All profit will support my independent project for the Landscape Institute, which I expect will be a community service project, most probably in aid of the group Architecture for Humanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment