Author: Zack Ramey
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Thinking and Drawing – The Hardest Thing to Put into Words
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HyEeRw_mAs?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0&w=853&h=480]
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Portrait of Aldous Huxley – Drip Painting
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCwk5fCM_AI?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0&w=853&h=480]
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Barnett Newman on the Aesthetic Roots of Humanity
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“Man’s hand traced the stick through the mud to make a line before he learned to throw the stick as a javelin.” “Undoubtedly the first man was an artist,” begins a remarkable little speculative essay written in 1947 by Barnett Newman. It proposes that the aesthetic act of wonder precedes the social and utilitarian acts…
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Showing Promise
A student puts off his final essay till the night before it’s due. The stakes are high. Four pages and 10% of his final grade for the course are on the line. The deadline looms guillotine-like above his head, and this motivates him. He gets his grade back soon and proclaims to his peers, “I…
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Trusting the Ground of Learning
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/75106381″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] In order to access that “world in a grain of sand” which William Blake wrote about, physically, nothing more is required than to walk the beach, sit and comb the sand. In the end, physically, there is probably nothing required. What he meant was a psychological alignment. Only…
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To Imagine the Real
All life is repetitive. Repetitive forms, repetitive behaviors. It isn’t strictly repetitive, for Nature loves surprises. But you won’t find fiddleheads popping out of the ground in December. Springtime calls them back to stage, always with that same quiet mathematical elegance. Of course, the human species is no exception. For all our cultural diversity, technical prowess,…