How would you like to start 2023 in a new, creative way?
Every Wednesday and Saturday, we will be posting an installment of our book, Through an Artist’s Eyes: Learning to Live Creatively offering you a pathway to art and the vision of the artist. Enabling you to develop your own inner creativity and apply it to the personal cycle of everyday living.
III. Transformation (from March 25, 2023)
New Dreams, New Visions
The next chapter is for you to create—the dreams and visions that only you can imagine. An exciting prospect, isn’t it?
You have many choices before you. For instance, you can actually create your own works of art: a drawing, an oil painting, a watercolor, or a sculpture. Take a class, find a teacher—or perhaps you might prefer to be self taught, following the example of Grandma Moses.
Or maybe you wish to explore the unknown and the ever-expanding boundaries of the universe. For aren’t we children of the Space Age? Although most of us are still earthbound, we have access to incomparable images taken by advanced technology such as the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. The goal of this government project may have been scientific, but the photographic results rival the artistry of our greatest painters. So why not be on the cutting edge of this intergalactic realm that promises the infinite beauty of another sphere?
Or do you prefer the the more familiar ground of terra firma? Are you drawn to rejuvenating our ancient home that seems increasingly threatened by global warming and other consequences of human overpopulation? Environmental artists offer a way; initiating projects that are multiplying around the globe.
Would you like to be part of this movement too? Is there a river or a field or a beach near you that is overwhelmed by traffic and people, pollution and garbage? Wouldn’t you like to help return it to its original state, pristine, clean, and a pleasure to view and contemplate? Check the internet for both organizations and personal websites pertaining to environmental art.
You’ll discover artists like Betsy Damon, who has created large scale peace gardens with sculptural forms that cleanse urban waterways. Another artist Aviva Rahmani, through her art project “Ghost Nets,” has restored a salt marsh from an abandoned railroad terminal on the island of Vinalhaven, off the coast of Maine. A community organization, AMD & ART, has reclaimed mainland in Vintondale, Pennsylvania, turning it into a recreational and historical area through a coalition of artists, scientists, engineers, planners, and a host of volunteers.
Look carefully at the architectural “landscapes” around you. Do you feel surrounded by a confusing jumble of high-rise apartment complexes and low-level houses, pseudo-Gothic churches and modernistic government buildings, sprawling airports and narrow pre-fabricated gas stations? What if you were a city planner but with the eye of Michelangelo, the genius behind St. Peter’s in Rome, or a Frank Lloyd Wright, creator of the spiraling Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York City and the compact Usonian house designed for the average dweller? How would you rearrange these zones that you pass through either on your daily commute or when you travel? Perhaps you might want to contribute your visual ideas to your local planning board or civic council. Or find a citizens’ group or association involved in revamping your community.
And don’t forget the art museum or gallery as a source of inspiration. Even if you don’t live near one, you can always access them via the internet, books, and other publications. Be aware of favorite museums’ ongoing exhibitions, from traditional shows and retrospectives of artists in the mainstream of art history to contemporary and experimental displays, including various kinds of media such as videos, movies, television, and computer.
Reach out, too, to the other art forms: music, dance, poetry, literature, theater, story telling, film, or perhaps a creative expression still evolving. The multi–arts experience is the ultimate arts goal of a journey you have only just begun.
Copyright 2010: Joan Hart, Museum One, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented including photocopying, recording and information storage and retrieval without permission from the publisher.
ISBN 9780615301884
