Pablo Picasso Month

People have been posting about things they are thankful for this month.

I've agreed with many of them, liked many of them.

I'm adding – I'm thankful for Pablo Picasso, whose words made me think hard all month long. I've learned some things that I wouldn't have without his words... most of them about myself.

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 26

One of the values of academic or other exacting training is that it gives you a great understanding of what you should do.

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.
 

~ Pablo Picasso

And once you've learned the rules really well you can break them, not with impunity because breaking them is still loaded with lots of risk even for those who know intimately how the rules go, but with a purposeful abandon.

I'm not saying that by following the rules you cannot make amazing art... I'm saying that when you mindfully ignore what you've been taught – knowing full well that there are consequences – unpredictable things happen. And out of those unpredictable things, out of that experimentation, comes the new things that would never have happened if we were just plodding along doing the things we (and others) had done before.

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Why Pablo Picasso 

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 23

The urge to come across as knowing a lot only gets greater as more and more information is at our fingertips... never mind the fact that we are so ill-equipped to discern fact from fiction.

You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.

~ Pablo Picasso

Why is it that "I don't know" is so hard to say? We really don't like it when the question has no answer... or when any answer is as good as any other answer. We don't like ambiguity or uncertainty...

I've recently learned that there is a great deal of freedom in being able to say " I have no fucking idea..."

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 15

I probably don't ask "Why not?" enough.

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

~ Pablo Picasso

But I think I make up for it by almost always asking "What if...?"

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 12

Abstract art often confuses people.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

~ Pablo Picasso

I don't like all the art I see. No one does. We all have our preferences. I do try to figure out why. Sometimes it's as simple as the lack of skill, or a theme or color scheme that puts me off. Sometimes it's much more subtle. I'm sure it's the same for you.

The important thing to remember is that art is supposed to generate ideas and feelings. It's supposed to make you think about something or feel something. And it should be more than "that's pretty" or "that's horrible."

So many people struggle with how to react to (or interact with) abstract art. We don't know where to look. We don't know what we're seeing. And facing the unknown we become uncomfortable and make the assumption that we really don't like abstract art. I think it's important to take a step back when we find ourselves making those assumptions. It's easy to like art (or explain why we don't like it) when the artwork depicts what we think we recognize (however I would caution against making that assumption too). What we really need is a way to approach abstract art that allows us to experience it without prejudice.

I've heard a lot of ways to approach art – both from the consecrated academic establishment and from others not so lofty... ways that are good and valid and valuable. When you are new to art school or art circles you get told how to do things – by everyone. However, I think each person has to come up with their own way to experience art (and only those who really want to will).

My approach to experiencing art is a bit like what C.S. Lewis recommended (or was it Tolstoy? I can't remember). The most important thing is to really take the time with a piece of art. I don't make way through the gallery/museum/exhibit quickly. Well, I try not to. This means that I often don't get to see all the art that's available – and that's okay. When I know that I've only got a short time I will sometimes do a quick scan and pick out the art that I feel drawn to ( I might love it or I might hate it).

When I'm in front of the artwork, taking my time with it, I try to find the story it is telling me. I look for recognizable imagery or imagery that I can associate meaning to. I make a story about it in my head. I really do try to keep it inside my own head and not tell others the stories – I don't want to annoy them and most people already think I'm a bit odd... and even more importantly – I might derail their efforts to create their own story with the art. Then I try to put myself in the story. After I've spent some time with it I will turn away from it (maybe even visit with another piece of art) and then I'll return to it and see if I see anything new.

I had this conversation last week with someone who thought abstract art was pretty useless... I think he left my office with a new appreciation for his ability to appreciate abstract art... maybe.

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

Pablo Picasso Month - Day 11

We often defeat ourselves with our own words and worries. I am always amazed (and not in a good way) at the abundance of people whose first response to any challenge is "I can't..."

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

~ Pablo Picasso

We shouldn't Pollyanna our way through life, but we need to push back against the urge to "I can't" ourselves out of new things. I've been there too, though. So tied into what I thought was inevitable that I couldn't see there even were other possibilities. It can creep up on you, that "I can't" mindset, that feeling that you aren't very good at something, anything...

My mother would always tell us that if we started out with "I can't" we most certainly cannot. [She actually used to say "Cain't never did nothing," – used to drive me crazy.] As kids we weren't allowed to say "I can't" until we had given it our best attempt, at leasttwo or three times. It's not that my parents were task-drivers, or harsh; they were very caring and supportive. They just thought that we shouldn't take the easy way out, and to them "I can't" was taking the easy way out. And the result of that was that all of us kids – and most of our kids – are very well equipped to take on the challenges the world throws at us.

I think all the "I can't"-ers would benefit from living with my mother in their formative years.

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Why Pablo Picasso Month?

Encouraging an art-filled life

A friend asked me about art opportunities for her son (who spent his morning making masks)... and I said:

There are some venues around here that offer art opportunities. We can talk about them sometime. But I want to say that while it is grand to get kids together to make art, I think it's more important to make sure that the creative creature that lives inside of each of us has a chance. Parents are the best incubators for that creative creature.

I think that the critical thing is to encourage constant experimentation... making art is experimentation - pure, wonderful, exasperating, beautiful experimentation - it's giving in to the urge to "what if..." something, to take a bit of this and a bit of that and put them together to make a new thing. It doesn't have to be limited to traditional art activities - building a snow fort or baking a pie or making some contraption can be experimental - and if it is, you're feeding the creative creature.

The most important thing for raising a child (or an adult) to live an art-filled life - to be blessed with the indescribable lightness of being that art generates - is to be willing to totally wreck havoc in the name of experimentation, to be willing to put the journey and the finding out ahead of things like order and propriety and everything else that shuts down the creative mind, that forces us to be those cogs in the machine.

I was very lucky as a child - my parents did not have much, but they let us play with almost everything they had. The contraptions we made were applauded and treasured - even when they had to be scraped off the sidewalk, or painted over, or dismantled so that dinner could be put on the table, or, or, or...

I was "sewing" before I started school, "building" before I was out of grade school... I learned how to use tools, how to make stuff from bits of this and that, how to fix things, how to "see" what might be, how to be fearless in my experimentation - to know "I can do that..." whatever "that" was.

And all because I was taught that the creative creature was important, that it was the most important part of me - the part that made me alive - the creative creature was me. Life was all about the making and thinking and looking and finding... All those doings done, all those thoughts thought, they stayed with me throughout my life. Even in the times when I was too afraid to make art, when life demanded too much of me to be able to spare the energy, I still was art-filled.

And one day I came back to it.

So, would I like to make my living making art? Hell yes. I'd love to... and I am really stubborn, so maybe it will happen.

But it's ever so much more important to just be making the art.

More to ponder as the school year begins...

A friend of mine sent me a link in response to my last posting. 

Like Lilly Like Wilson by Taylor Mali

Thanks Dirk. The poem made me smile. I loved the story it told.

Something to ponder as the school year begins

Overheard as I passed a classroom last semester:

"God, I hate this. This class is so stupid..."

"What makes you say it's stupid?"

"It just is!"

"I've found that people often say a class -- or anything else, for that matter -- is stupid when in fact they are simply uncomfortable with the ideas being examined.

My job here -- the entire purpose of higher education -- is to challenge your comfortable life. To get you to think about the uncomfortable things in the world. And perhaps most important of all, to help you develop a mind that is open to all the conceivable possibilities. Because if you're not open to all the possibilities, you'll never understand the questions, let alone find the answers."

Dedicated with deepest respect, love and appreciation to every teacher, every professor, that made me think about the uncomfortable things.

BMW - Ideas and Thoughts

BMW is asking people for ideas for the future on facebook

"Do you have a great idea, a design, a vision for the future or a start-up concept that concerns sustainable mobility? Just go to our “Your ideas” tab and enter the details of your idea, design or concept. We will promote the best three ideas with posts on our wall. We are looking forward to your entries!"

I'm not certain that I have a specific project. But I do have an idea that I feel is critically important... not a new idea, by far, but one I don't hear enough people talking about.

We really, really need to be mindful of the entire ecological effect any given project, product, or process has. Surely we're good enough at analyzing things now that we could determine which is more harmful - paper or plastic? gasoline or electric? coal or nuclear?

I don't drive a hybrid or electric car - not because I don't feel passionately about the environment or sustainability... but because I don't know if it's worse to drive a very fuel-efficient traditional vehicle, consuming petroleum products and leaving behind the residue of my passing... OR if it's worse to drive a hybrid/electric and encourage the ecological damage that the manufacturing production of batteries produces.

So I guess my Best Idea is that we learn the actual impact of our decisions; that we require government and industry to reduce, reuse and recycle (provided that recycling doesn't use more resources than making new - another quandary for another day...), that we find a way to de-politicize the information and the actions taken; and that we reward ecologically responsible behaviors (government, industry and individual) with funding and perks - make it pay to be ecologically responsible.

This will mean that we cannot maintain constant economic growth... that, above any other postmodern economic concept, needs to be publically challenged and understood... we cannot have constant, perpetual growth - it's a fallacy to think that our resources will sustain it. Like every other rhythm on earth - ecomomic growth should ebb and flow.

How to Fix Congress

Below is the content of an email I received today. I'm not certain exactly what I think of it except that I think it represents an overly simplistic point of view.

I have put some questions at the end... What do you think?

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took  only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified!  Why?  Simple!  The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.  This is one idea that really should be passed around.

 Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. Term Limits
   
   12 years only, one of the possible options below
   Two Six-year Senate terms
   Six Two-year House terms
   One Six-year Senate term & three Two-Year House terms
2. No Tenure / No Pension
   
   A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
   
4. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately.
   All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.
5. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
   
6. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.
   Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
7. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
   
8. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
   
9. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.

The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message.

Maybe it is time.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete.

You are one of my 20+.  Please keep it going.

My questions for anyone interesting in discussing this:

1. What, if any, are the benefits from not having term limits on congress?
2. What, if any, are the downsides from not having term limits on congress?
3. What, other than the length of time served by individuals, would be different if we had term limits for congress?
4.  Would there be a financial advantage or benefit if the retirement/Social Security/health insurance changes suggested here came to pass?
5. I'm curious - does anyone think any amendment limiting congress in these ways would actually have a chance? 

It is - and rightly so - a difficult process to adopt amendments to the constitution. The constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by a joint proposal by the congress (with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate) or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures (none of the 27 amendments to the constitution have been proposed by constitutional convention).

1. The congress proposes an amendment in the form of a joint resolution which is forwarded directly to National Archives and Records Administration's Office of the Federal Register for processing and publication. 
2. The OFR adds legislative history notes to the joint resolution and publishes it.
3. The archivist submits the proposed amendment to the states for their consideration by sending a letter of notification to each governor along with the informational material prepared by the OFR.
4. The governors then formally submit the amendment to their state legislatures.
5. A proposed amendment becomes part of the constitution as soon as it is ratified by three-fourths of the States (38 of 50 states).  

It seems to me that no congress is going to promote an amendment with these kinds of changes the emailer is proposing. And I'm not certain that we'd ever get 33 or 34 state legislatures to call a constitutional convention... for this or any other amendment. The payback - on this one especially - might be a bitch.

I also think that for the most part these kinds of changes - whether by law (statutory, case or regulatory) or by amendment - are suggested when there would be a marked advantage to one party or the other (remember that the Republicans were all for term limits during FDR's presidency, but wanting to eliminate them when Reagan was in office, and I'm sure there's a equally appalling example for the Democrats too, but I just cannot think of one right now). And that sort of pisses me off - I don't like it when it's assumed that I won't see the hidden agendas...

So my last questions are:

1. Who is this benefiting? Or maybe, more importantly, who would think it would benefit them?
2. With whom do you think this email originated? Not actual people, of course, but what political views, economic status, et cetera... do you think might inform their opinions and motivation?

The ACLU and You

I received the following by email this morning...

"Christmas card idea

What a clever idea!
Yes, Christmas cards. This is coming early so that you can get ready to include an important address to your list..

Want to have some fun this CHRISTMAS? Send the ACLU a CHRISTMAS CARD this year.

As they are working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday, we should all send them a nice, CHRISTIAN card to brighten up their dark, sad, little world..

Make sure it says "Merry Christmas" on it.

Here's the address, just don't be rude or crude. (It's not the Christian way, you know.)
ACLU
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York , NY 10004

Two tons of Christmas cards would freeze their operations because they wouldn't know if any were regular mail containing contributions. So spend 44 cents and tell the ACLU to leave Christmas alone. Also tell them that there is no such thing as a " Holiday Tree". . . It's always been called a CHRISTMAS TREE!

And pass this on to your email lists. We really want to communicate with the ACLU! They really DESERVE us!!

For those of you who aren't aware of them, the ACLU, (the American Civil Liberties Union) is the one suing the U.S. Government to take God, Christmas or anything Christian away from us. They represent the atheists and others in this war. Help put Christ back in Christmas!"

Actually, for those who are uninformed - the ACLU is concerned with protecting the rights of the Individual from the encroachment of the State.

Do I like and support every cause that the ACLU takes up? Absolutely not. Do I think that we need the ACLU? Absolutely.

Without an organization guarding our constitutional rights we would soon become more powerless than we already are.

Some of the battles they fight for us:

Illegal wiretapping and spying on U.S. citizens - what if the government decided you were a suspect? Would you want to be spied upon, have cameras and microphones all over your house (your bathroom, your bedroom)?
Torture - do you think it's alright to torture people? If you do I think you've lost your soul.

Illegal internments - do you approve of locking people up without any proof they should be? without a fair trial? Think about it. What if your neighbors told the government you were a terrorist? What if you had to prove you weren't, instead of the government proving you were? How do you prove a negative? They could simply say, "well we haven't found the evidence yet, but we're keeping you locked up until we do."
Preventing government from having a say in religious worship - and you who claim Christian should realize that they also fight for you, they keep the government out of your churches, and only stipulate that your church needs to stay out of government. Would you want the government telling your priests and pastors what they could talk about?

I also feel the need to point out that decorating evergreen trees and bringing greenery into the home at or around the winter solstice did not originate with Christians and Christmas. It's a tradition much more ancient than that. In fact, the early Christian church prohibited the decoration of trees and bringing evergreen bough into the home.

And, my dear emailer, I AM one of the "atheists and others" that the ACLU represents, and so are YOU.

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Matters of Concern II

I've been reading about SB 1070 - the Arizona anti-illegal immigrant law.

It's very alarming, and it makes me no little bit sick to my stomach. This law is akin to the law that put Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans in labor camps during WWII. This law turns Arizona into a place where you have to carry your "PAPERS" with you at all times so that you can prove you are a citizen of the U.S. or that you are in the country legally - if your skin is brown that is... Very Gestapo... 

Some proponents are positioning the law as a way to address the influx of illegal immigrants, claiming that individual states should have the jurisdiction to police the national borders. However border control is a task that the constitution grants to the federal government alone. These advocates of SB 1070 seem to feel that harassing Americans of Latino or Hispanic decent and those immigrants who are legally here in this country, is acceptable collateral damage, and they should just put up with it in the name of catching those who are here illegally.

They fail to realize that that is absolutely unacceptable. No citizen of the U.S. is supposed to have to fear the papers-police. All their ranting about Anti-American-this and Un-American-that seems to miss this very crucial point... In my mind there's nothing more anti-american than the loss of our civil liberties, of our essential freedoms. And one person's loss of freedom is a loss for all of us.

The supporters of SB 1070 fail to realize that much of the illegal immigrant problem is due to our government's mistaken policies. That NAFTA and other like-minded free market-based policies actually have worsened the illegal immigrant problem instead of being a part of the solution. In the 1980s and 90s, NAFTA proponents boasted that trade, not aid, would boost the lot of Mexico and Mexicans. By raising Mexican living standards and wage levels - NAFTA's intended goals - Attorney General Janet Reno predicted NAFTA would reduce illegal immigration by up to two-thirds in six years. "NAFTA is our best hope for reducing illegal migration in the long haul... If it fails, effective immigration control will become impossible..."(Reno, 1994).

Well, guess what, Janet - it failed.

Instead of increasing the living conditions for the Mexicans and benefiting the Americans, the flood of illegal immigrants to the United States is up, and the standard of living of the average Mexican is down. People don't leave their communities, their friends, their families and their cultures because they want to. They leave because they have to. NAFTA set the stage for the kind of poverty that drives people to break laws simply to feed their families.

NAFTA permits heavily-subsidized US corn and other agri-business products to compete with small Mexican farmers. This has driven the Mexican farmer off the land because they cannot compete with the low-priced imports of US corn and other agricultural products. Millions of Mexicans have been forced off their farms and out of agriculture, and many of those that remain are living in desperate poverty. These people are among those that cross the border to feed their families. Meanwhile, corn-based tortilla prices have more than doubled in recent years and will continue to climb due to, in part, the U.S. policies encouraging production of corn-based ethanol.

NAFTA's service-sector rules allowed companies like Wal-Mart to enter the Mexican market. By selling low-priced goods made by ultra-cheap labor in other countries, these discount stores eliminated tens of thousands of small and medium-sized Mexican businesses.

It's definitely a quagmire now.

I'd like to think that a move to fair market policies rather than free market would eventually fix at least some of the problems, but I think that the vociferous voices on the right would find a way to stigmatize the fair market movement with their cries of "Socialist agenda" and "Anti-American."

I also doubt that we've enough time to make it work before the meltdown occurs. It seems we're reaching a fevered pitch - at least as far as the rhetoric is concerned.  I'm worried that we're going to see an increase in violence soon.

The bigots hiding behind the "States' Rights" rallying call are very good at working their constituencies up into a rabid spittle-spewing froth, feeding the immigrant-bashing mantra that is sweeping the country via their  Tea Party pro-America, America-for-the-Americans platform, and playing on the fear of losing jobs to immigrants - the fact that those jobs are ones that no red-blooded Tea Party regular would ever consider doing is irrelevant.

egad... what's next?

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Ten Lessons the Arts Teach

From The Arts and the Creation of Mind, by Elliot Eisner

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
   
   
2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
   
   
3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
   
   
4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
   
   
5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
   
   
6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
   
   
7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
   
   
8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
   
   
9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
   
   
10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Helen Levitt, Photographer, 1913-2009

Interesting piece.

I especially appreciate the observation that we tend to suppose a genius to creating art, a master status for an artist. There isn't, you know... neither genius or master. You just get out there and do it. If anything sets an artist apart from others it is a trained eye (ear) and an obsession. Like anything else, if it is important enough, you do it over and over and over - looking for ways to do it better. Some of us read every book and article on art like ours. Some of us make and make and make, honing our skills, practicing our praxis. Some of us study the HIStory of the art we do. Some of us strike up conversations with every other artist we encounter, picking their brains for ideas and inspiration. Some of us experiment and push boundaries - our own boundaries, our audience's boundaries, and the boundaries of the media we work in.

Some of us actually do get better. Some of us become masterful in skill and expert of eye. Not Masters, but masterly.

It's not as special as you might think.

Anyone can do it, with enough passion, enough work. Some do it better than others (and therefore are able to sell/show work - although much of what sells isn't particularly better than that which never graces a gallery wall or floor, just better marketed).

More thoughts later...for now you should watch this video.

Supreme Court Arguments Today

This is being argued in court today.

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.
Hopefully NPR will give have information on air later today.

Tom Dispatch

I've added Tom Dispatch to my blogroll. It's a political statement I'm making by doing so.

I encourage people to read it, but I'll warn you ahead of time that it's not for the faint of heart. It can be scary, discouraging, infuriating, frustrating and more.

It is one of the most important things I read.

It's really hard to do it though.

New Email Signature

Normally I just use my contact information for my email signatures. I have always thought that adding some pithy signature was either pretentious or preachy or polly-anna-ish.

Last month I actually added one - "Please consider the environmental affect of unnecessary printing." that seemed to be enough to say, to remind people that they do not have to print everything. Yesterday I changed my email signature to:

Inspire rebellion to promote defiance to achieve social justice.

The inspiration for this was a lunchtime webinar that Abelisto and I attended at the university where we work. The webinar was produced by Magna Online Seminars and The Teaching Professor. It was an interview with Michael Newman, author of Teaching Defiance: Stories and Strategies for Activist Educators. On page 10 Newman challenges us with a mission - "Our job is... to teach people how to make up their own minds, and how to take control of their moment. It is to teach choice. It is to help ourselves and others break free from our pasts, plan for the futures we want and resist the futures we do not want. Our job is to teach defiance."

There was an explanation of what teaching defiance is made up of, how one teaches it. There was also a good discussion of critical thinking and the fact that the idea of critical thinking has been domesticated.

I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Newman, we must make teaching defiance central to our work. The knowledge and skills we transfer to our students must be used in the name of defiance to create a more just and socially aware world. That is the path to salvation of the world and everyone in it.

Inspire rebellion to promote defiance to achieve social justice.
Amen brothers & sisters.

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