Idyllwild Arts Students Participate in Pacific Inland Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” By: Madison Marlow, Student Body President and member of IAA Dance Department
Like many other children, I was first exposed to the world of dance when my parents took me to see Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” at age three. To this day, I remain enchanted by this ballet for various reasons: Clara’s determination to save the Nutcracker, the waltzing of the flowers, the realistic snowflakes that gently swirl in the air and land on the dancers during the snow piece, and the Grand Pas De Deux music – so beautiful it could melt your heart. But above all, it is the hours of discipline and training of the dancers that shine through in their technique when they step on the stage.
“The Nutcracker” is a ballet in two acts about a young girl named Clara. During her family’s annual Christmas party, Clara is given a Nutcracker by her mysterious Godfather Drosselmeyer, the toymaker. After Clara has fallen asleep that night, she awakes to a frightening scene when the clock strikes midnight. Out of nowhere a Mouse King appears along with his mice, only to be slain by the Nutcracker, who has turned into a real-life prince. Clara thanks the prince for saving her from the hands of the Mouse King. Clara and the prince take a magical sleigh ride through the forest to the Land of Sweets. Different types of candies and sweets dance for Clara and the prince, out of gratitude for slaying the Mouse King. At the end of the festivities, Clara returns home and wishes the prince good-night. Clara wakes up the next morning underneath the Christmas tree to find the Nutcracker still in her arms.
Jonathan Sharp, faculty member of the Idyllwild Dance Department, is also faculty member of Inland Pacific Ballet as well as a principal dancer with their company. He presented the opportunity to the dancers of Idyllwild to audition for Inland Pacific Ballet Company’s Nutcracker season. With a small number of dancers accepted after the audition (Mauricio, Ricardo, and myself), rehearsals began immediately. For a few weeks, every Tuesday and Saturday were spent driving down the hill, taking class at Inland Pacific, rehearsing a few hours, and then returning to Idyllwild. Every single day of Thanksgiving break (with the exception of Thanksgiving Day), the three of us and Jonathan spent seven to eight hours a day rehearsing. We invested so much time and energy into “The Nutcracker,” and have enjoyed it every step of the way.
Idyllwild Arts Dance majors participate in the Inland Pacific Ballet's "Nutcracker". Pictured are Ricardo,Madison, Gina & Mauricio
The experience was nothing like I expected it would be, but I have learned so much from it. Every week, I have had the opportunity to take company class with company members from the ballet. The classes are taught by highly professional ballet teachers (including Jonathan) who have spent years in companies and the dance world themselves. The girls that I dance with are mostly my age and they are all incredibly beautiful ballerinas. The environment is very friendly, but everyone is so focused and disciplined. The dancers are strictly there to dance and learn how to improve their technique. I already feel stronger as a ballerina, especially after watching the other dancers and picking up on their good habits to exhibit in my own dancing.
I am so full of gratitude for being able to participate in Inland Pacific Ballet’s “The Nutcracker.” Mauricio, Ricardo, and I are so thankful for this opportunity that Jonathan has given us. Sometimes I feel a little claustrophobic in a small arts school on top of a mountain, and it is more than refreshing to dance with a company that exposes me to the true nature of the dance world. Going into college next year for dance, I now have a better sense of what to expect and the competition out there. By establishing relationships with the teachers and dancers at Inland, I now have even more connections in the dance world and I have made friends that I hope to dance again with someday.
The next performances of Inland Pacific Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” will be on the 10th, 11th, 17th, and 18th, at Big Bridges Auditorium on the campus of Pomona College in Claremont, California. Please come and watch the performance! To find out more information, please visit http://www.ipballet.org.
Parallax Online!
Parallax, the literary journal produced by the creative writing department, is proud to announce the launch of its online component, a companion to the print journal. The print journal, which has been running for fifteen years, features writing from high school students in IAA’s Creative Writing department. In addition, it showcases artwork from IAAs Visual Arts department.
With the help of alum David Shook, editor of the World Literature blog Molossus, and Brian Hewes, Director of Digital Media and Marketing at Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), the editors of Parallax (Whitney Aviles-Low, Editor in Chief; Becky Joy Hirsch, Junior Editor; Scarlett McCarthy, Fiction Editor; Rebecca Cox, Poetry Editor; and Isaac Dwyer, Dramatic Writing Editor) designed and launched Parallax Online in order to reach an international audience.
The goal of the Parallax Online Literary Magazine is to champion serious high school writing, providing a springboard for high school writers into the professional writing community. It is currently accepting submissions from high school students around the world.
Working on developing the website was a tedious, yet extremely rewarding, experience. The mentors, David Shook and Brian Hewes, were incredibly helpful with both designing the website and creating an amusing classroom experience. With David’s assistance, editors of the journal and students of the publishing class have been put in touch with upcoming authors for interviews, including John Worley, Maile Maloy, Susie Wild, and the translator of Haruki Murakami’s IQ84, Philip Gabriel. Brian’s mere presence seemed to make everything on the technical side just work—and with profound results.
We look forward to receiving submissions!
The website, although still under construction, can be viewed here:
http://parallax-online.com/
Submitted by Isaac Dwyer and Becky Hirsh
Music in the Meadow via Ustream
Last night was our first Music in the Meadow of the year. M in M is a juried recital, which means that the students audition to be a part of it. The fun part for me was that four of my students were selected to perform. They were great and really showed the work that they’ve been doing since school started six weeks ago. But the really fun part was our new UStream feature. Now for the first time we’re going to be live streaming concerts and other performances directly to the internet. Some of these will be archived so that they can be viewed at a later time by anyone with a computer and a good internet connection. Last night was a test, so the feed went out live with no real announcement. After, we liked what we did, so we shared on the Idyllwild Facebook page. Now about 15 hours later, it’s been seen over 300 times, more than three times the capacity of Stephens Recital Hall! Now, that does NOT mean if you live in Idyllwild we want you to stay home and watch our things on the computer! But if you’re not here, say, you’re parents that live in Omaha, or a third cousin that lives in Paris, please tune in! Share with your friends, help us create an online performance audience. More information will come in further tweets, facebook posts and centerstage emails. But for now, you can see last night’s performance by going here.
Also, here is the permanent link to our Ustream Channel for Music: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/music-performances
Visionaries and the Alphorn
From Sydney Cosselman
Krone Museum Director
Once again thank you to students who brought their parents by the Krone Museum during Family Weekend. As always, I enjoyed talking with them, and sharing our school’s history. There were many activities on campus this past weekend, and I am sure everyone had a wonderful time.
This year the Krone Museum is holding classes in our exhibit area. In preparation for this, I have recently begun a project that, when completed, will exhibit a visual timeline for our school. Through historical photograph displays, I will focus upon individuals who have made a difference during time spent at our school. Under the photographs there will be corresponding notebooks that include further information about these individuals for those who are interested. The photographs and notebooks will change periodically. In addition, I will be including more information to be presented on a monitor, and will introduce some of these individuals as well as objects in our collection each month in the museum blog. Please feel free to come into the museum when classes are not in session.
DID YOU KNOW?
The first object I would like to introduce is our Alp horn, and fittingly so because it was the first object to be donated to ISOMATA (Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts). The label reads “The first gift ISOMATA received was a Swiss Alphorn, a 12th century shepherd’s instrument that was a popular instrument until the 1880’s especially in the Swiss and Bavarian Alps. It was a gift from Mr.& Mrs. George Haight of Northwestern University who visited the Krones in Idyllwild and thought it a perfect place for an instrument that resounds through the mountains. On July 23, 1950, Meredith Willson premiered his song In Idyllwild in the Atwater Kent Bowl. It began with a distinctive four-note melody for alphorn, which became the traditional wake-up and lights-out signal at ISOMATA . Here are a few photos taken over the years…
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Does Art Make You a Better Person?
By Brian D. Cohen, President, Idyllwild Arts – reblogged from The Huffington Post
“If you want to be a better musician, become a better person.” — John Coltrane
Making art may seem pretty selfish. One fears the creative soul will withdraw from social interactions, into self-absorption, solipsism, and neglect of societal expectations and ordinary responsibilities. The often obsessive nature of art-making exacerbates our fears of these tendencies.
Maybe we’ve been taught to think that inwardly directed attention is a little bit shameful, egotistical, or self-indulgent, and the products of introspection are effete, impractical, or useless, at best. “You can’t eat beauty.” While you’re making art you’re not doing anything for anyone else, and you’re probably not helping out much around the house.
There may be more to it than that. The composer George Rochberg (I painted his garden furniture in 1978 while we argued whether Prokofiev or Shostakovich was the better composer; I had some nerve) stated: “The pursuit of art is much more than achieving technical mastery of means or even a personal style; it is a spiritual journey toward the transcendence of art and of the artist’s ego.” Art helps you get over yourself, beyond yourself.
The Greek philosopher Plotinus likened our lives to the creation of a work of art:
“How then can you see the sort of beauty a good soul has? Go back into yourself and look; and if you do not yet see yourself beautiful, then just as someone making a statue…must cut away excess and straighten the crooked and clear the dark and make it bright and never stop until the divine glory of virtue shines out on you…”
The French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault recalled that the ancient Greeks sought:
“to make their lives an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values” He had no fears that a self-aware individual would withdraw from outward social responsibilities, but would “be able to conduct himself properly in relation to others and for others.”
We tend to admire with less hesitation the discipline, direction, mastery, stamina, persistence, and the ability to live with ambiguity and uncertainty of artistic practice. Some schools have also figured out that while kids are making art, they’re staying out of worse kinds of trouble.
What about experiencing art? The concept of empathy began in 19th-century German psychology as a description of emotional and kinesthetic responses to works of art — engagement with works of art provokes empathic response. Empathy is how we know others’ minds and others’ experiences. It is a redefinition and expansion of oneself through recognition of the experience of another, resonance with another’s experience so immediate and complete it is experienced as one’s own response. Starting early in our lives, with children’s books, then music, movies, novels, poetry, and visual art, we discover through art worlds that belong to others, and they immediately become our own.
Recent studies in neuroscience have pointed to the role of mirror neurons in empathic response. Wikipedia tells us:
“a mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another…the neuron ‘mirrors’ the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting.”
Is this the neurological basis for empathy? For understanding what other people are feeling? For moral behavior? Is this the basis for power of art to move and transform us?
The development of empathy in an individual from art mirrors the original derivation of the term; it is art that makes us empathic; art that models others’ inner lives for each of us; art that attunes us to experience and suffering beyond ourselves. It is imagination, the other signal attribute of creative thinking, that lets us see how the world can be changed to be better for ourselves and for others.
Grace
By Brian D. Cohen, President, Idyllwild Arts – reblogged from The Huffington Post
“I’ve been shooting in the dark too long/When something ain’t right it’s wrong…” — Bob Dylan
“This is what a picture should give us … a colored state of grace.” — Paul Cezanne
I don’t remember much of what was said to me in graduate school, now nearly thirty years ago. Most was dismissive, or condescending, or vague. (What most art schools fail to do is to examine their own premises. They so often are permeated by what style was current when their professors were trying and failing to make careers as gallery artists, or maybe by a dilute tertiary interpretation of what’s happening in Artforum, that they don’t question and don’t see the conformist pressures they unwittingly impose. These fish, they don’t know they swim in water.) I went my own way, quite alone, except for my friends, dead Modernists in art books.
But one thing was said to me, maybe the only thing I clearly remember, that stayed with me, and remains the highest praise I’ve ever received. It was from a visiting artist, the only woman ever to review graduate student work (all 19 tenured professors were male). She looked at my paintings for a long time and said they had grace. That was it — grace. She didn’t say anything else that I remember.
Why this stuck with me I don’t really know, but I thought, or hoped, I knew what she meant, and in fact the comment helped me realize that was what I wanted in my work. It has become what I’ve strived for ever since. Whether you can work for it, I don’t know either, as it usually comes unbidden, rarely when you want or need it the most. It won’t come without work, but it doesn’t come from work. (Salieri worked harder and was more devout than the petulant, irreverent, infantile Mozart, at least in the apocryphal movieAmadeus). It rarely comes at all, and never stays.
What is it — ineffable, resonant, untranslatable, immaterial (yet inarguably moving through the senses)?
The first and only time I heard the violinist Hilary Hahn in concert I saw her bow pass over the strings but I couldn’t sense where the sound was coming from. She made the sound, but it was no longer part of her, or a result of effort; it had left her for us.
Grace doesn’t belong to us, much as we may feel we’ve worked for it. It is not our own, but can reach others. What other reward of making art has this value: touched someone else with grace? Even this we rarely know. To be truly gifted is to be able to share this grace, and the gift of no use until shared.
This sense, feeling, state — that you’ve made something right and true, and necessary, something that must be in the world — is worth any amount of travail. Is this the only way we know we aren’t lying to ourselves? Nothing is right until you get there, and when you get there, you can rest. The rest is silence.
Things
By Brian D. Cohen, President, Idyllwild Arts – reposted from The Huffington Post
“As an artist, I sometimes feel no urgency to make more art because I am surrounded by throwaway images, piles of inexpensive objects, and lots of noise.”
–Ernesto Pujols
I have a profound ambivalence about things. I love to have my things around me and wouldn’t choose to part with any of them, but they impose a psychic burden on me. More than anything, I love to make things.
The English word “art” emerged from its root “to make” or “to put things together” and morphed into “artifact” and “artifice,” always implying the making of “things,” sometimes clever or tricky things.
Have all artists at some point realized that what we make is a fabrication, in two senses of the word? This is obvious, because we know we make something, but if we value sincerity, genuineness, purity of purpose and unaffectedness, it can be a difficult realization, and reconciling yourself with this self-consciousness is a necessary and painful creative condition. It can make it uncomfortable to call yourself an artist. The best things artists have made exist in the world in a dual state of obvious artifice and undeniably penetrating presence. Great art is at the same time false and the often only avenue to basic truths; an artist simultaneously lies to you and moves you, and you let it happen. You willingly suspend disbelief.
Picasso got this: “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” I like the Picasso in his late 20s, when he openly embraced painting’s artificial conventions (its lies), in Cubism, and the Picasso in his 80s, when he mocked his own loss of virility, his inability to keep lying to himself, his unaccustomed vulnerability (he was unexpectedly telling the truth). In between, except for Guernica, he lied to himself all the time.
I, and many artists I know, much as we love art, are drawn to things that don’t call themselves art, and hence don’t lie. Marcel Duchamp, in the guise of R. Mutt, wrote, “The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.” Duchamp was avenging the insults and indifference of the provincial American art world of 1917, and passing a rather astute aesthetic judgment as well. But he was fed up with artifice, pretense and self-delusion — he was disarmingly honest. In excising both the “art” and functionality from objects he revealed their unseen beauty. And he stopped making things pretty much altogether.
The creation of much art is a result of compulsion, and we may not need all the things that come of it. A while ago I learned to engrave copper, and I enjoyed doing it so much (I was also pleased with myself for having acquired an anachronistic and highly specialized skill) that I engraved every hard surface I could find. I realized that I couldn’t stop and that what I created in exercising this manual compulsion didn’t matter. I enjoyed what I was doing and didn’t think a lot about what I was making.
The flip side of compulsive creation is compulsive acquisitiveness. Actor Hugh Laurie muses about acquiring his 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible: “In a funny way, the biggest difference now is not that I have the car, but that I lack the coveting. I genuinely love the car — it puts a spring in my step — but the coveting was almost more beautiful.” The thrill is in the chase, never the capture, says my cat. The object is a vehicle for desire.
We should get the compulsive creators and compulsive acquirers together. I guess that’s consumer capitalism.
William Morris in the mid-19th century became alarmed at the products of industrial mass production and their lost or decaying aesthetic standards: “If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’” Industrialization created inexpensive things in formerly impossible quantities. I love all those cheap 19th-century things and the industrial aesthetic he hated, maybe just because to me they’re now old and not made of plastic. But I don’t like the unimaginable quantities of things in every endless aisle of Wal-Mart. I’m good with fetishism, not so much with planned obsolescence and rapid disposability. Consumerism creates trash, lots of it and very quickly, and also inevitably bad art, and crafts (formerly useful things made inutile and unaffordable by their presumption to be beautiful).
Picasso (again) saw the commodification of art happening, and inveighed against the objectification and superfluity of “art,” calling a stop to it: “Enough of Art. It’s Art that kills us. People no longer want to do painting: they make art.”
There are lots of things and lots of art in the world. The best things stand quietly apart from the world, take us away from it, then recall us to the world, mirror it, model it, intensify it and reflect it. The unique object is indispensable, irreplaceable and irreplicable (that is not a real word but should be). What do we see in it? Certain things become projections of images, ideas and analogies. We don’t see the “thing”; we see what it makes us see. Art historian James Elkins says, “No two people will see the same object; we change along with the object, we see a new experience … A picture is the ways and places it is viewed, and I am the result of those various encounters.” Elkins savors the perception of the “betweenness” of objects rather than their “thingness.” This betweenness is a numinous layer; it is why we want to possess things, and why we can’t.
I love my stuff, my found objects and artifacts (wood type, sea shells, bird’s nests, model airplanes, vintage motorcycles, books, ship models, an old Mercedes, engraving tools, measuring devices — things for the most part not made by an artist, or no one calling himself an artist), and I wouldn’t want to part with any of them. Their materiality is inherent, but our experience is immaterial. I can keep enjoying my things without wearing them out, using them up, or throwing them out. I would like to keep my things forever.
Vasari records, “It is said that Piero de’ Medici … often used to send for Michelangelo, with whom he had been intimate for many years … and one winter, when a great deal of snow fell in Florence, he had him make in his courtyard a statue of snow, which was very beautiful…” I’m no Michelangelo, but maybe my engraving was a more durable version of the same thing.
Is art “doing” or “making?” A verb, or a noun?
I have this post-apocalyptic image — that all we have made to endure is trash, permanent mementos of brief appetites, very, very briefly useful, disposed of, then surviving forever. We would do better to make statues in snow and leave nothing.
End of the Year Follow-up
From: Sydney Cosselman, Krone Museum Director
During the last week of school, sixty-six students from Nick Cooper’s ESL classes gave final presentations, which included slideshows, in the museum. About the experience, Nick writes “This was the perfect place for my student’s presentations. The museum gave my students the professional looking surroundings they needed to do their best. I seriously plan on having many more classes in the Krone Museum.”
The Krone Museum will be happy to have Nick’s classes and others during the coming year. Also beginning this fall, there will be a class taught in the museum three days a week. I look forward to sharing this new adventure with Sydney Robertson and her students.
Summer 2011
This summer has also been a busy time for the museum. For one week in July, Brent Michael Davis, a very well known Mohican composer instructed several students in art of composing two minute string quartets. Their performances were wonderful, a delightful evening for everyone.
Poetry classes have been held in the museum for years. This year, B.H. Fairchild, who teaches at Claremont Graduate School, taught his “Hecht, Plath & the Craft of Poetry” classes here in July.
In addition, interest in Max and Bee Krone, our programs, former instructors, conductors and students continues. We have had scholars from San Diego to Vienna, Austria requesting information throughout the year.
This summer I have also had the privilege of having Sara Pilchman working as an intern in the museum. As you may remember from earlier posts, Sara is a former student of Idyllwild Arts and is presently enrolled in a Museum Studies program at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA. While here, Sara has been conducting research, documenting objects, creating displays in the Library/Museum hall display case, and working with me on a project for teachers and students that will be offered this fall. I have really enjoyed working with Sara and hope to see her again next year.
From Sara, “It’s been a busy summer here at Idyllwild Arts! As a youth camp counselor and museum intern there’s little time to rest, but coming into Krone and being able to research Idyllwild’s past (check out the scrapbooks we have all the way from 1949!), design the gallery space with the ever lovely Sydney Cosselman, and learn how to archive historical materials—along with being able to mentor young artists—has really made it all worth it. There are big plans for Krone Museum in the future, and I can’t wait to see what the school makes of it!”
Last but certainly not least I want to join others in welcoming Brian and Holiday Cohen to Idyllwild Arts. We are very fortunate to have them in our community. Brian has shown a keen interest in our museum and I look forward to working with him, hopefully for many years to come.
Idyllwild Arts Summer Program – Youth Piano Workshop by Dr. Doug Ashcraft
The 2011 Youth Piano Workshop was a great success. Students came from Southern California, Seattle, Mississippi and other places. They polished pieces they’d prepared at home and learned new things on the spot, including pieces for 4 and 8 hands. Work culminated in a final recital in Stephens recital hall. Along with a lot of ice cream, recreation included a trip to hear Lang Lang play with the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl.
Education and the Visual Arts
by new President of Idyllwild Arts, Brian D. Cohen:
I just moved 376 boxes, mostly books and prints, to a new home in California. I get a little fussy about my books, and like to categorize them rather specifically by subject. I’m serious about this, but the more serious I get, the more trying the task becomes.
Let’s take a book in my collection, Typologies, a book of photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher, a kind of documentary visual encyclopedia of industrial buildings. Where do I put it? It could likely go in the Photography section, simply because the Becher’s took photographs. Or the art history section, because the Bechers were pioneering conceptual artists in Germany in the 1960’s. Or the book arts section, as Typologies is a multi-page collection of serial images. Or in my separate section on industrial history, which includes books on mills in 19th C New England. Or in my architecture section. Or in a section on the hybrid field of study called industrial archaeology. Or in my landscape section specializing in photographs of structures erected in the landscape. It’s a silly problem to have; but I want the book to be among like-spirited book-friends, and I want to be able to find it, and there are too many possible places for it to be.
I thought I coined the term extradisciplinary, until I found it on the Internet already in use. By that term I meant looking deductively, in totality, and then determining means for further analysis and exploration. Let me offer an example. When Leonardo became curious about the form of the human body, a subject to that point in Christian Europe more or less off-limits, he used what means he had – primarily observation through drawing and writing (and some cutting) – to inquire about the workings of the body and its parts and why things looked and worked the way they did. The science of anatomy didn’t really exist; medicine was more anecdotal than analytical; and science and art weren’t yet regarded as separate disciplines.
A little later in the Renaissance, as the notion of a modern liberal education evolved, the disciplines considered worthy of study weren’t subjects as we think of them but rather means of inquiry and communication – language, spoken and written, argument, analysis, and visual art.
Academics and arts are often separated in an implied hierarchy of importance and priority. They don’t belong apart, and weren’t born apart. What is art, or science, or math, or any endeavor of the intellect and spirit but exploration, observation, recognition, and translation? Art is informed by more than art; it can encompass and embrace every aspect of life and is an impetus and means for inquiry into other areas of human expression and endeavor.
Visual literacy is an essential skill. We encounter an endless array of images pretty much constantly, few of which we’d call art, yet all of which have been created to evoke or induce some effect in us or communicate something to us. Our aptitude for visual and aural interpretation is vastly older, deeper, and quicker than our ability to interpret words. And as the visual precedes the verbal, so it defies and confounds it.
I rarely use the words “talent” or “creativity,” as those words do a better job of keeping people away from art than helping them discover it. Creativity is discovering patterns, relationships, connections, and beauty — seeing itself is a creative act. The potential for creativity resides everywhere, in every subject, every decision, and every relationship. I remind students that what they are after is always within their own experience, capability, and feeling. Chinua Achebe eloquently expresses an educational philosophy I embrace: “What you want to do as a teacher is to make people aware of the complexity of experience…this is what education should aim to do: to draw out from us what is there so that it can interact with what’s outside.”
Educators are talking a lot about assessment these days, but education is too complex an enterprise to measure in one dimension. You learn more than one thing when you learn. What do we assess when we look for quality? Not just a momentary measure of what we already know we’re looking for. When we assess students in art, we hope to learn something we didn’t already know – what the student has discovered and shown us, if we are open to seeing and hearing it. Not just “is this good?” – but “what has this student discovered, what have they told me, what have they made me feel?” The full depth of assessment comes in time, in a student’s growth and his or her own discovery. It is the evolution and development of thought and expression, and this education never stops. At Idyllwild the arts are central to our lives and learning. We are fortunate to see and guide this during the most formative years in a young artist’s growth, adolescence.
But I remember that it’s never really easy. Samuel Beckett’s admonition to “fail; fail again; fail better” has served as my personal credo as an artist. Beckett’s quote recalls both the inevitability and necessity of failure as well as the ceaseless imperative to strive to get somewhere, and it reminds us of the vulnerability, uncertainty, and frustration of creative exploration. But no one who has the creative imperative would every surrender it.
Art offers something to draw from and to return to (what have we created that we can be more proud of, in our anthropogenically damaged world?). Daniel Pink writes in his book A Whole New Mind, “Abundance has satisfied, and even over-satisfied, the material needs of millions—boosting the significance of beauty and emotion and accelerating individuals’ search for meaning.” By studying precedents for the work they undertake and experiencing the rich historical and multicultural array of the arts students find recognition and embodiment of their own condition. And in creating art, the world is revealed to them, and they are shown to themselves. “We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen. (Rilke)
