Benched Week 59: coming back around

It started with a carousel – the second I've come across in two weeks.  This one was in Bryant Park, Manhattan, a site of a previous Benched post.  I was coming around again, only to find the pastoral field completely buried under construction.  (They apparently turn it into a skating rink every year.)  I missed the field.

Which drove me inside the nearby NY Public Library.

There, in an oaken room filled with silent laptop users, their glasses glowing with reflected light, I found this large painting.  It’s of Homer, dictating to his daughters Paradise Lost.

How apropos.

My bench for this week waited just outside, in a high-ceiling hall that sported four, impressive murals, each one depicting a scene from the history of making books. I sat down across from this one.

The irony of the shot is not lost on me: beneath a medieval scribe, painstakingly hand-lettering a manuscript, a young teen thumbs out her texts.

Which made me think of what we’ve lost in our latest technological convenience.  Let’s not simply call it “handwriting,” for in that single action are countless delights – the flourishes, the unique slant of letters, the lilt of loops, the sweep and solidity of a signature.  There’s art in one’s scrawl.  It’s a unique product of you.

The first decade of this current century was a dark time for illustrators.  American culture turned away from hand-drawn art for the fancier imaginings of photo-illustration.  We were all entranced that photographs could be just as unreal as paintings.  At the time, I kept thinking that the trend would turn around and come back.  We have a deep longing for connection to other humans that digital effects cannot satisfy. 

And I was right. 

There is a renaissance, a rising tide of demand for hand-drawn art in popular media and advertising and even the corporate boardroom.  I am happy to be riding that wave and hanging ten for as long as I’m able.

I do sometimes (as my niece would testify), but not nearly enough.  How about you?  Will you invest twenty minutes to write out a note for someone you special?  Let’s regain the human touch we’ve lost in our messaging.  It's time to turn the trend around: what has gone from popular to neglected to nearly forgotten can be rediscovered and made popular again.  Let’s bring handwritten letters full circle.

Just like a carousel.

Benched Week 58: a singular idea

Perhaps it was the gray blanket of clouds overhead.

Or the solitary gull that posed for me.

Or the final bloom on a rose bush, vainly defying the coming cold.

For one or all of these reasons, I found myself on a bench under the looming, dramatic cluster of the GM towers along Detroit’s riverfront feeling a bit melancholy.  There was a sporadic sprinkle of rain and a trickle of people passing nearby – an occasional lone jogger or cyclist.  It was the right setting to be by oneself.

 

My thoughts, however, were on collaboration.  On the flight, I read a chapter of Creativity Inc., a book by Ed Catmull, one of the execs of Pixar, about lessons learned in building their innovative culture. I’m sure I’ll come back to it in these posts, but what struck me in this sampling was the power of collective creativity.

A breakthrough at Pixar during the time of Toy Story 2 was that “getting the team right is the necessary precursor for getting the ideas right.”  Why? Because “ideas come from people. Therefore, people are more important than ideas.”  Catmull explains, “…too many of us think of ideas as singular, as if they float in the ether fully formed and independent of the people who wrestle with them. Ideas, though, are not singular. They are forged through tens of thousands of decisions, often made by dozens of people.”

Think of it: dozens of people coming together to puzzle out the creation of a work of art. 

Intriguing, don’t you think? Sure, that makes sense for a movie.  But can it be applied to a painting or a drawing?

A friend’s son tried this on street level, pulling off   of performance art where the passing people became the artists.  He called it a continuous drawing: for over a day, a piece of graphite was kept moving on a huge canvas wall.  Anyone walking past was invited to take it for a while to add whatever fancied him or her. The accumulated image was startling and complex.  Random, yes. A bit gimmicky.  But sublimely interesting.

So here’s my question: what can we create together?  You and me.  Not just you, singular.  You, plural. Us together.  Social media is fertile soil for collaboration.  How can we join our varying skills and interests and ideas to fashion something unique?

Maybe it’ll be a piece of writing, like the story our family once tried to write, with each member taking a chapter.  (Given up quickly, alas.)  Or could we assemble a montage, with each of us contributing an image? How about a group doodle?

Share your ideas with me. Let’s put our heads and hands together.

Benched Week 57: a signature thing

Meet Fred.  He is, by his own description, the foremost expert about the town of Chagrin Falls, Ohio.  It was my luck to have found him on a bench along Main Street, not far from the falls themselves.

I had chosen the town by its evocative name on a map.  And when a little research revealed it to be the hometown of Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, I knew it would be the perfect bench-stop on my drive home from Cleveland.

Sitting down with Fred, I asked him how long he’d lived in the town.  “It’ll be forty years any minute now,” he answered.  He said he’d never contemplated moving somewhere else. I could see why.  It had distinctive old houses in quiet neighborhoods and a quaint downtown with reminders of its past.

 

Really, how many towns can boast of a popcorn store?

When I told a friend recently that I’d be stopping by Watterson’s boyhood town, he suggested I look for a toboggan run.  It struck me how memorable his creation was that we could both instantly picture C&H flying off some snowy hill.  Watterson himself credits this partially to the fact that he stopped at the height of its popularity.  It was his signature work.  He felt it was finished.  So he walked away.

What is your signature thing – that defining work, that effort you can put your name proudly to without a hint of chagrin?

For Fred, it was being his town’s memory-keeper, the conversational touchstone to Chagrin Falls’ communal past.  He knew the town.  The town folk all knew him.

What is my signature thing?

In a literal sense, signatures are not usually my thing at all.  I very rarely sign the corporate art I do.  Except for yesterday, when in a flight of fancy, I created this whimsical drawing, inspired by the shape of the magnetic whiteboard eraser.  I’m not sure why that called me to sign it.

But maybe that is a clue to my signature work – capturing a moment by creating something quick then looking for the next moment of inspiration.  Make it and move on.

Just like these bench sittings.  I told Fred about how I’m traveling the country, sitting down to connect to a place and its people.  He said, “You’re like a portable Fred!”

Well said, Fred.  That’s an idea I can put my name to.

Benched Week 56: swimming alone

Of all the plethora of Robin Williams quotes I’ve read in recent days, the one that’s stuck with me is this: “I used to think the worst thing in life was to be alone.  It’s not.  The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.”

That thought hit me while eating a buffet dinner in a huge ballroom in Disney’s Dolphin Hotel, surrounded by thirteen hundred corporate strangers.  It came back to me later when I found my bench along the Boardwalk and watched people strolling by.

Some time after that, I stood on the edge of a crowd laughing at the antics of a street performer. I felt an affinity for him.  We’re both solo entertainers.  He balances spinning balls on top of one another; I spin art and words out of markers.  Both of us are hired to do our specialty alone in front of an audience.




















Earlier in the day, this being a Disney resort, I took a brief dip in one of the pools.  It felt necessary. It was brief because as soon as I submerged, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my family ought to be here. A pool seems superfluous without my daughter to enjoy it with me (and agree with me about how tepid it was).  It made me appreciate those who find a way to manage traveling alone for fun.

My thoughts turned, as they often do on these sittings, toward art.  Why does art need to isolate the artist?  Henry Miller, writer, said, “An artist is always alone – if he is an artist…the artist needs loneliness.”    And another author, Charles Browder, wrote, “The good ideas are all hammered out in agony by individuals, not spewed out by groups.” 

I get it.  There are times, like when one is actually creating, when an artist is likely to be alone. But after a lifetime of an isolating imagination, I’m feeling powerfully drawn to what Brian Henson said of his Muppet-maker father, Jim: “If you asked him how a movie would turn out, he’d say, ‘It’ll be what this group can make, and if you changed any one of them, it would be a different movie.’ Every day for him was joyously filled with the surprises of other people’s ideas.”

Wouldn’t you love to be a part of a collaborative environment like that?  It pulls like a magnetic force on my spirit.

An artist friend, who I recently bumped into on a street corner in Lewisburg, asked me if I’d join him on an upcoming Saturday in drawing dueling portraits of each other.  At first, I wasn’t sure that was my kind of thing.  But now that I’ve spent more time alone in the spotlight, I’m thinking it’s just the thing I need.

It might be fun to swim creatively with someone else for a change.

Benched Week 55: the lessons of three benches

Bench #1

I needed a calm place. Having driven seven hours to New Hampshire, I sought out the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site for a quiet moment or two.  But a testy email from a client rattled me.  I sought a spot where I could soak in nature and perhaps sketch a bit.

This beautiful, curved bench seemed just right.  I sat, got out my sketch pad and drew.  Still agitated, I found the process of sinking down into the sketch a retreat. 

As I watched other visitors stop and snap cell phone shots of the garden, I thought about how we often use photos as a kind of enjoyment lay-away: tucking the beauty into our cameras to have the fun in reflection, often missing it in the moment.

The first bench reminded me of the need to take time to savor beauty.
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Bench #2

The sketch finished, I started roaming the grounds. The annoyance returned.  By the time I found this bench along a tree-lined path, I was on the phone with Alison, whose advice helped me put things in perspective.

Artists are often thought of as loners, who pursue their vision in solitude. 

But Augustus Saint-Gaudens knew the role others could play in his work.  He had assistants to help him create his large sculptures. 

Augustus also had his wife, Augusta.  (I wonder in what month they married?)  And other artists, who saw his idyllic home, came to New Hampshire to live nearby.  In fact, his house became the center of the Cornish Art Colony.  He frequently had creative people over for dinner and parties.

This bench reminded me that art needs a community.
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 Bench #3

Saint-Gaudens sought to have viewer interaction, so in this figure of Admiral Farragut, he had his pedestal designer put in two benches to invite onlookers to be a part of the work. I sat down on one, feeling the delicious coolness of the stone against my back.  Thankful for his invitation, I felt my participation continued to keep the work alive in a small way.

This last bench challenged me to keep an invitational element in my own work, making it more than just a statement of who I am, but an offer to my viewers (or readers) to come, to share something together with me.

Like the advice of three benches.  Wisdom without words.

Benched Week 54: the trap of success

I’ve never seen a downtown as empty on a Sunday night as St. Paul, Minnesota was last night.  It was like the city was asleep in the daylight. And judging by the number of people snoozing in parks, that’s not just a simile.

I started out with high hopes, impressed with an overpass view of the mighty Mississippi.  But the first park was a bust.  It was hotter than I had expected.  Most of the people I passed seemed a bit off.

Just when I was considering calling it a day, I ran into an old friend.

I was an early fan of Peanuts.  When the cartoon strip was converted into television specials, I recorded the music on a reel-to-reel player with a microphone held up to the TV set, so that I could teach myself the music on the piano.  Linus and Lucy, the most recognizable of the melodies, became my signature tune throughout junior high.

Pleased to find Marci on a bench, I sat a while with her and asked her what she was reading.  She was too engrossed to answer.

As the sun created intricate reflections on the buildings above me, I reflected on the price of success.

Charles Schulz was incredibly successful with his characters.  But acclaim can be a trap.  Because of the brilliance of his early years, Schulz stayed with his round-headed kids long past the point when he had fresh things to say.  In my mind, his later years were spent more on cashing in on them than on stretching himself.  Contrast that to Bill Watterson, who walked away from Calvin and Hobbes (and a barge-load of money) because he felt he had done enough with them.  I respect that.  Just as I respect an athlete who knows when to hang up his cleats.  Or flip-flops.



It’s an interesting question: would you rather do one thing well, or dabble in many?  I have chosen the latter – partly by necessity, partly by a deep-seated desire to explore.  It drove me recently to add watercolor crayons into my scribing, and last week, to buy a pricey draw-on monitor so that I can scribe during conference calls. Why stay pat when there’s something exciting just around the bend of the river?

So, when the sun goes down on my career, I think I’d rather be known by the breadth of my work. Hopefully it'll be more than an inch deep in meaning, but definitely a mile wide in scope.  There’s too much fun in the journey to ever fall asleep on the shore.