Art and life...

...life and art.

The distinction seems to blur. I spent some time with my friend Ron in his studio earlier today. It was pretty neat chilling out, seeing what Ron was working on, and sort of picking his brain. I found the similarities between the artistic process and the academic research process was much greater than I had thought. There were all sorts of parallels. Ron described how Jackson Pollack helped transform art from just being the execution of the concept into what it is today - something that encompasses the process as well. He talked about how it was more than just the idea, but sometimes art happens when you simply allow a process to happen, and see the result - rust on a steel beam, bricks in a salt kiln. It reminded me of two things - tea and storytelling.

Tea? There are these teapots that are very common in Chinese culture. They're works of art, highly collectible, and of course, serve tea in a proper way. I remember this summer being in China, and hearing some of the stories, seeing some of the tea sets. A story stuck out in my mind. I was told some of the tea sets were so seasoned that eventually, they didn't even need tea leaves to make tea. These teapots were able, over time, to capture the essence of the tea so well that by simply pouring hot water into the teapots (and the cups) that the result would be this tea that had a distinctive flavor that was savored. It's not quite turning water into wine, but it's pretty darned cool.

The other thing was storytelling. Or, to be more specific, listening to storytellers. I've been doing some various forms of marketing research now. What got me into the Ph.D. program was my interest in the low literacy work that I was doing. In my research, we do experiments, but in administering these questionaires, there's a very interactive component where we actually read the questions and possible choices to the respondents. This leads to an ongoing conversation with the person that you just don't get in the typical experimental setting. Instead of having 50 college kids who don't want to be there, other than to get extra credit, and want to leave as soon as possible, you have a single individual who is very excited that you want to talk to them, and they tell you so much more than you would expect. You hear the story, and all that they tell you in addition to the study that you've designed. And I think that you learn so much more.

So what does this have to do with anything. A couple things. The first is the tool and the medium as art. It's not just the ideas that we have, but also how we go about expressing them that is the art. This rings true for me right now as I try to figure out how I want to develop my doctoral program. I need to figure out the methods that will best address the research questions that I'm interested in. The second is the observation of the effects of the world as art. Looking into the world, this just strikes me as a great way to learn about how people are. If you take the time to listen to a story, and to really let them tell you what you're curious about, you can find out so much more than if you just treat people as a number. Looking introspectively, Just like that teapot that picks up all of the essence of the tea to, by being immersed in the right environment, I can eventurally develop into something that creates value out of something as common as water.

More on life - GQ and Becca are getting married, as of last Saturday (officially, anyway). Just when I thought that the weddings were going to die down, next summer is looking busier and busier. I've got Tim getting hitched up in mid-May, GQ in early June, C-Lauff in late June, Joe in September, and OD in early October. Yikes. And who knows who else is going to crop up.
And Schultzie because a daddy this morning. Jon Everett Schultz III came into the world at a length of 20" and about 8 and a half pounds. And I'm wondering when more people are going to start having kids. Just strange. Life goes on. Maybe I should grow up at some point. But what fun will that be?

-Chairman