Tag: ideas

Podcast 11: Austin Kleon

dannygregory6 Comments

This week I interview best-selling author Austin Kleon on the creative process.

Austin is one of my favorite writers and thinkers about the creative process. He is a poet, a collage artist, a blogger, an author, a diarist, and a writer who draws.

Listen to the episode here.

Mentioned in this episode:

COMPLETE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Continue reading “Podcast 11: Austin Kleon” →

Podcast 09: Let’s Get Rid of Art Education – a modest proposal

dannygregory7 Comments

I wrote this essay two years ago and lots of people hated it, so like a mangy dog licking a suppurating wound, I have returned to gnaw on it further in this week’s podcast.

Please listen and let me know what you think. And please subscribe on your favorite podcast app so I may gall you further in the weeks ahead.

Episode transcript: Continue reading “Podcast 09: Let’s Get Rid of Art Education – a modest proposal” →

Why art matters.

dannygregory42 Comments

I think about art a lot. I look at it, I read about it, I make it. But why? What purpose does it actually play in my life? Why not focus on the Yankees or bow hunting or philately instead? These are reasonable questions so I decided to sit down and think of a few answers.

Pretty pictures. It’s common to downplay or dismiss beauty as a criterion for great art. We live in dark times, the critic says, and pretty pictures like Monet’s waterlilies and van Gogh’s sunflowers and Koon’s puppies aren’t relevant to our grim reality. Beauty is kitsch escapism and no challenge to the modern intellect. But that curt dismissal is ugly and wrong. We need beauty because, even in the grimmest times, it keeps us hopeful. Beauty gives us pleasure and we must always make room for happiness. Even through depression, wars, and tragedies, it’s still okay to respond to a beautiful face, a perfect rose, a catchy tune, a gorgeous sunset, a silly joke. More than okay, it’s human.

Art is real. And that’s more essential than ever. Because we suppress and distort so much in our culture. We fear death but can’t discuss it. We self-medicate rather than allow ourselves to feel sad or afraid. We bastardize nature. We celebrate fame and wealth and youth and ignore the wisdom of age. Art tells us it’s okay to let the mask slip. It’s okay to feel lonely. It’s okay to feel pain. It’s okay to feel impermanent. We all do. Art is not afraid to show the face of reality. And to say, “Everyone feels this way and has since the dawn of time”. That’s why the Egyptians made art about death and fear and loneliness and so did Rembrandt and Mozart and Hopper and Hemingway. Art says, “Pain exists. But we all get through it.”

Balance. We want our work, leisure, relationships, past and future, all in equilibrium. But that’s an illusion. None of us is sufficiently poised to maintain that balance for long, if at all. We are all distorted in one way or another, all imperfect, all human. Our lives are out of balance and so are our feelings. We may feel too serious, too trivial, too stressed, too controlled, too afraid, too old, too narrow-minded, too left, too right… Art lets us let it out. To cry in the movies where no one can see us. To be filled with heroic pride as the orchestra soars. To be soaked in adrenaline. To find a moment of calm. Art injects us with pure emotions we may never otherwise encounter on the bus or in the supermarket. It gives yin to our yang, Kirk to our Spock.

We are all freaks. The more normal we appear, the deeper we have hidden our truth. When David Bowie died, everyone stepped out of their personal closets to embrace him. Because art lets us all know it’s okay to be different. And besides, you’ve got no choice. We all harbor secret thoughts and fantasies and fears. Art hangs them soon the wall for all to see. And embrace.

Everyday matters. Our society celebrates money and fame. But the rich are no better than the other 99%. And the famous are by and large not role models, just cracked egos standing on a tattered strip of red carpet. But beauty is everywhere and art points it out for us. van Gogh paints his shoes and his postman, Warhol a soup can and a car crash. Pollack splatters house paint to show us the beauty of chaos. Rembrandt shows us the loveliness of his lumpy nose. Bacon immortalizes a side of beef. Artists show us the eternal majesty of trees and waterfalls, sagging breasts and smelting plants. While pop culture snatches back its fickle crown every news cycle, art shows us the eternal value of a simple lemon on a sunny kitchen table. Now, go, it says, look at your life and the riches it contains.

Valuable. I don’t go to church, mosque or synagogue. I don’t read Plato or the Tao. But art teaches me the things that matter. Explore the values that endure. Remind me of the legends that have passed down through time. These are crucial truths to guide me as I travel through my ordinary life, riding the subway, sipping my tea. Vital lessons that never go out of style like: Nature is to be revered. Humble pleasures are the sweetest. Everyone is significant. We are all connected. Hope is eternal. Bad things happen. The road bends. Life should be enjoyed.
Where else can I get these reminders? In fortune cookies and this month’s self-help bestsellers? Or in masterpieces that have endured because they embody and transmit our collective wisdom.
The history of art is the history of what’s important to us as civilization and as a species. That’s why we erect huge buildings to house and display these old pieces of cloth daubed with paint, why they are among the first things we must visit when we come to a new city. They contain the truths that we, as a civilization and as a species, know are to be treasured.

I believe in my marrow that art is not a luxury. It has been a crucial part of humanity since we told stories around the campfire and painted the ceilings of caves. Art is not just for intellectuals. Art is not just for museums or public television or vacations in Paris. Art is here to make us feel better and be better. To remind us of our humanity and our connectedness. To unearth and share our feelings. To remind us we are not alone. Art is forever and for everyday.

“Why should I learn to draw and how are you gonna teach me?”: On the teaching philosophy of Sketchbook Skool

dannygregory15 Comments

A key to successful learning is to have a motive. Why do I want and need to learn this?

When we first started to learn things, it was to survive in the world. Learning how to walk, how to eat solid food, how to talk, and how to play with others were hard but essential lessons. When we first got to school, we had to learn things because, well, mainly because we were told to do so by adults and because everyone else in the room was doing it too. We didn’t really understand the reason for learning what we are being taught but we did it because it some big person told us too. Eventually, some grown-ups inspired and excited us in the classroom and then we were doing  it because it was fun and we wanted them to like us even more. Those kinds of teachers are the ones that have the power to change our lives.

When we are grownups, why do we want to learn things? Generally, because the new skills will help our careers or enable us to accomplish some useful goal like cooking dinner or programming the DVR.

So why do people want to learn to draw? And how do we help them to persevere?

So why do people want to learn to draw? And how do we help them to persevere? People want to learn to draw generally because is a skill that they felt was potential in them for a long time but they were never able to focus on or get proper guidance  to fulfill that potential. “I’ve always wanted to draw,” people tell me. But there were huge obstacles that sat in their way — the largeness of the task, the enormous commitment required, and most of all the fear of failure.   This stems from the sense that while others may be good at this, you were not born with the talent or ability to ever accomplish even a basic level of drawing skiinstructionll yourself.

So the first and most important task is to give people back their sense of power. To make them think that they can do it, to show them that that ability does reside within them, and that if they put in a bit of work it will not be wasted effort. Because there is that sense that the process is magical and that, without that spark of magic, no amount of effort or training will pay off.

As teachers, we have to show them that it is indeed possible. And the key to doing that is to show them that people just like them —novices, frustrated creatives, people born apparently without talent — are able to make progress in the same way.

If you look at Betty Edwards’ classic  book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, one of the most notable things in it are the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures. We see accomplished beautiful drawings and next to them the same sort of amateurish fumblings that we are now capable of. The book promises us that, just like these people, we will be able to progress from A to B.

A great way of doing that is by giving people a sense that they are surrounded by like-minded people. Community, is a key part of empowering them. I can tell you over and over why I think you will be able to accomplish this but, unless you trust me, unless you feel I am like you, your inner monkey critic can simply dismiss my expectations and say that I am different from you so my lessons do not apply.

You can buy a book and struggle alone with the exercises, giving up when you hit the first obstacle or disappointing sketch. But when you’re surrounded by thousands of others with the same ambition, the same busy lives, and the same apparently limited talent, you feel like maybe it is possible. And when you have that sense of possibility, the next step is to give you the opportunity to exercise. We need to give you work to do that will be both fun and rewarding. So we need to devise assignments that will fit in with your current life, that will remain interesting and varied, and that will move you one small step at a time, toward the goal of creative empowerment.

When you’re surrounded by thousands of others with the same ambition, the same busy lives, and the same apparently limited talent, you feel like maybe it is possible.

I think it is similar to  learn the way we did when we were children, to just enjoy the process, to have fun in the process rather than agonizing over the first meager results. All learning involves work. But it need not feel like work. It should  be fun, rewarding, and engrossing in someway.

We have the fantasy that learning a skill is simply a matter of getting access to certain shortcuts. That there is a secret set of tricks that will instantly have us drawing effortlessly and accurately, as if there were secret rules that allowed you to drive a car expertly or shoot a basket expertly. Drawing is a physical skill. Like any other, it takes practice. There are no shortcuts but there are things that will make the effort and time commitment required seem just like fun.

No one of the steps will instantly provide you with extraordinary abilities. But they will build your faith. And that faith means that you will continue to take one small step after another. And fairly quickly you will be able to look back and see how far you’ve come. And that will re-reinforce your faith again so you will continue to work and to move forward.

None of the steps has a magic formula, it just contains inspiration. Because ultimately nobody can teach you to draw — only you can teach yourself. And the way you do it is by believing that you can, and doing the work to develop the skills and the connections in your brain and body to make it so.

On drinking the water.

dannygregory14 Comments

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As our plane swooped down over Mexico, endless green filled the windows. My first instinct was to wonder what sort of farming this could be, dense, unbroken and stretching to the horizon in every direction. As the wheels touched down, I saw it was jungle, an impenetrable mass of unruly, complex life. The runways had been cut out of the wilderness but no attempt had been made to cultivate the creepers and trees. Nature was too vast, man too small.
Mexico is a mostly modern country with drive-through Starbucks and TGIFridays. But many Mexicans accept the unrelenting power of nature, impossible to dominate completely when the air is humid and the sun shines brightly all the live long year. Grasshoppers the size of iPhones, careen through the sky with chartreuse scales and hot-pink wings. Raccoons wander into four-star restaurants and take corn chips off the bar. Cars are sun-faded, concrete is cracked, donkeys walk slowly. It’s not a rich country, but that’s not the reason things seem shop-worn and resigned. It’s because Mexicans accept the inevitable encroachment of Nature, that it’s pointless to be fastidious when geckos will wander onto your kitchen counters and carpets of kelp will wash onto your freshly grouted patio.
I like it.
In New York, we have been beating Nature back for 500 years and we think we’ve won. So we can’t help but freak out when mice nibble on the organic granola box, when mosquitos find their way under our 600 thread count sheets, when Hurricane Sandy knocks out our wifi for a week. If Nature gains the slightest foothold, we take it as a sign that our entire civilization is crumbling.
I like that in general Mexicans are so much less uptight about perfection. They are cool if you do things that are a little risky — but hardly dangerous. Things that would have flocks of lawyers descending anywhere in the States. Unsecured seatbelts don’t have those annoying warning alarms. There are packs of cigarettes in the minibar. People build restaurants out of driftwood and light them with masses of candles. Some cars are missing fenders or bumpers and are painted patchily by hand. Most streets have no sidewalks or street lights so walking at night under starry skies can be an adventure.
We sat in a beachside restaurant that served food that would have been the envy of any entry in the NYC Zagat. But before our appetizer arrived, the waiters patrolled through with smoking pails, emitting clouds of burning citronella so chokingly dense we could barely see our $12 artisanal margaritas. The mosquitos and gnats were barely dissuaded but no one bothered to complain to the Health Department, pausing only to reach under our designer linens to scratch the welts.
Mexicans don’t value their lives less than their Northern neighbors. They just accept that we can’t control everything all the time. And that this acceptance makes life easier and preserves resources for more important things. Insisting on perfection makes thing a lot less interesting and spicy. It’s also a losing battle.
Maybe it was the heat or the Negro Modelo but my pen line was a little looser in Mexico. I did a number of scrawled pages in my journal, drawn half lying down, book propped against my spreading gut, mango juice on my unshaven chin. Maybe this was how Gauguin felt.
I am sloppy as a rule, but I’m not always loose. I value looseness because it feels more organic and expressive, more human, more natural, more the way life is. Less uptight, less gringo. Jack tells me his drawing teacher insists they draw standing up, with their pads on an easel, and that they draw from the shoulder, not from the wrist, to make bold and sweeping lines with their whole bodies. Flat on my back on my chaise, I am far from that, but I feel integrated, natural, in tune with my surroundings. My body, immersed in sweat and heat and verdant richness, feels sensual and at ease. My inner critic, the monkey is dulled too. He is chewing lazily on a mango in the shade, indifferent to my drawing. He can’t be bothered to nag me when we have the jungle at our doorstep. In Mexico, monkeys sit on your roof, squat on your car, hoot from the trees above your hotel window. But it seems they stay out of your head.
Over this past week in Mexico, I haven’t been as insanely productive as I might have been. But I have been more in tune with my nature. I’ve dismantled waves, I’ve counted grains of sand, I’ve listened to grackles eat French Fries, and I’ve felt the walls of perfection erode. Rules, goals and expectations, it turns out, may not help me make as much stuff as simply sitting in the sun and letting the world grow on around me.