Perspective | The Direction of Intention

Trace The Line [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on March 6, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Love has a lineage. Without Piet Mondrian there would be no Ellsworth Kelly. Without Ellsworth Kelly there would be no Robert Indiana. For that matter, without Georges Seurat or Henri Matisse there would be no Piet Mondrian. Without the invention of the camera and the science of optics there would be no Georges Seurat. Of course, I’m referring to Robert Indiana’s sculpture, Love. We are rarely aware of how many lives influence our thoughts and give shape to our passing moments.

Love, the non-sculpted variety, follows the same principle in every life. It has a lineage. Chose any moment – any emotion – and follow the thread. An amazing web of interconnectivity emerges that stretches beyond…beyond. Sometimes I stop on a trail and wonder how I came to be walking through the woods in Wisconsin holding this woman’s hand. A tumble of choices. An immensity of influences and circumstances that quickly become impossible to comprehend. It’s no wonder destiny is such an attractive notion! Phew!

Four simple letters. Stacked symbols designed into another symbol. An aspiration? A graphic design? History placed Love in the box called Pop Art, thereby giving it a location-in-time. A starting point. A relative nod to lineage.

Standing in the museum, gazing out the window at Love, Dale Chihuly’s color explosion to my right, Kerri taking a photograph of the sculpture over the shoulder of a biker seated at a cafe table, the guard lost in his thoughts, a school tour echoing in the next gallery, a mural behind me that I’ve not yet taken in though it’s tapping me on the shoulder…meaning being made and shared and expressed all around me! How is it possible that we ever think we originate on our own? How is it possible that we ever think we walk this path alone?

read Kerri’s blogpost about LOVE

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, aspire, choices, Dale Chihuly, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, destiny, ellsworth kelly, expression, Georges Seurat, Henri Matisse, influences, inspire, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lineage, love, MAM, meaning making, Milwaukee Art Museum, originate, Piet Mondrian, Pop Art, Robert Indiana, scultpure, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Open The Binder [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on February 27, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

He was referred to me because he was failing. His English teacher told me that he was impossible, that he rarely came to class and he “just wasn’t interested in writing.” At the time I was working at the “alternative school” running an independent study program. My job was “to catch the students that were falling through the cracks” or “to retrieve the students who’d already fallen.” To this day, the language kills me.

We talked. We laughed. The assignments I gave him were about fun and breathing space. After three sessions, when he trusted me not to judge him, he came to our appointment with a thick black binder. It was very old. The seams were ripping. It was a sacred object. He tapped his fingers on the cover, still deciding whether or not to share it with me. He wriggled in his chair, vulnerable.

I will always remember the moment he asked, “Can I show you something?” I felt honored. It is what I always feel when an artist comes out of hiding and shares their work with me.

He gingerly opened the binder. It was literally bursting with stories that he’d written and alive with illustrations that he’d drawn. This young man was ditching English class so he could hide in the football stadium and write stories.

I asked him to read to me. As he read, he made marks on the page. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making changes.”

After a few sessions I asked questions about the characters. He shared his illustrations. One day, he came to our session with a new story complete with sketches that we placed in sequence across the floor. As he read, we stepped to the next drawing. And the next. He made more marks on his pages. He made notes on his sketches.

One day I asked if I could read one of his stories to him. As he listened to me read, he began to coach my reading. “Whoa! Did I write that?” he said, grabbing the pages from my hand. And then he asked, “How can I write that in a better way?”

“I don’t know,” I smiled. “What does it mean to be better?”

read Kerri’s blogpost about BE YOU

Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective, Possibility, Seeing | Tagged: alternative schools, artistry, artists, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, language, learning, story, studio melange, the melange, trust, vulnerability | 2 Comments »

Ask A Useful Question [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on February 6, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Answers are reassuring, but when you’re really on to something useful, it will probably take the form of a question.” ~ David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear

We read in the morning news about the exodus of teachers from the classroom. One paragraph in the story made me choke on my coffee. “In addition to having to deal with low pay, high student-to-teacher ratios, poor working conditions, post-pandemic learning loss, school shootings and social or emotional issues with students, teachers across the nation are also grappling with culture wars over what they can and cannot teach in the classroom.” (Rene Marsh, CNN, February 3)

If you’re like me, that short paragraph inspires a host of useful questions. To cite a “spurious”quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” One of my useful questions: why are we so fearful of an educated citizenry? The collapse of our public schools and teaching as a valued profession is not an accident. It takes a dedicated effort to undermine something so completely.

An educated citizenry asks good questions of its leaders. An educated citizenry would not be so easily duped by entertainment-posing-as-news. An educated citizenry would not fear its history or its future.

When we rounded the corner in the Milwaukee airport and saw the meditation room, it was like a magnet. It pulled me inside. An intentional place of peace! A quiet space for reflection. How rare in a place dedicated to hustle and bustle.

I was struck by the quote from the Talmud and carried it with me for days. To create peace, to experience peace, truth and justice must be not only be valued by the community, they must be lived by the community. Truth must be shared. Removing books from classrooms, gagging teachers from teaching the fullness of our history, does not change our history a whit. It does, however, soil our future, perpetuate the race to the bottom, and intentionally obfuscates truth. It creates discord by ignoring injustice.

As the Talmud quote instructs, in such a world, where truth is not valued, there can be no justice and, in the absence of justice, there is no capacity for peace.

Sustaining ourselves, surviving as a free people. Teachers are the stewards of our core values; theirs is a sacred obligation. And, the teachers are walking out of the schools. Here’s a useful question: Who could blame them?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE MEDITATION ROOM

Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, CNN, Critical Race Theory, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, educated citizenry, education, free people, history, justice, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meditation room, Milwaukee airport, peace, Rene Marsh, story, studio melange, the melange, The Talmud, thomas jefferson, truth | 1 Comment »

Buckle Up [on DR Thursday]

Posted on February 2, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it.” ~ Irving Berlin

There’s nothing like flying in a plane to shake-up and challenge your perceptions. Board a plane on a snowy overcast day and, after a few minutes of lift, punching through to brilliant sun and the curvature of the earth. What was true on the ground is not true in the sky. And vice-versa.

The first time I flew I was 18 years old. I remember thinking that, of all the people who’d walked the earth throughout time, very few had seen the clouds from above. Most looked to the sky and wondered what it felt like to fly like a bird. During our recent flight, looking down at the clouds, I was taken by the fact that the population of humans-on-earth has doubled since the 18-year-old-me first looked out the window of an airplane. Something that has never happened in the span of a single lifetime. If I live an average lifespan, it will triple. The challenges we face, from the migration of people to the warming globe to the crisis of resources, can be traced back to this simple statistic. The stress levers get lost in the rhetoric-shuffle.

From the sky, it’s easy to see that we are one team, occupying one planet. From up there, the wrangling over red or blue, the movement of the fickle markets, the fist-pumping red-faced divisions, all disappear. It’s easy to punch through the dense fog and see a bigger picture. A more perfect union.

I chuckled after I wrote that last metaphor because my inner cynic rolled his eyes and muttered, “Yeah, but first you have to WANT to get on the plane.”

My inner optimist, not to be outdone, replied, “Exactly. It’s human nature to want to see what’s over the next hill or above the fog. Everyone wants to get on the plane.”

Well, there you have it. Scintillating perspectives from the cynic on the ground and the optimist in the sky. Creative tension at its finest. While my cynic and optimist work this one out, I think I’ll fasten my seatbelt and prepare myself for a smooth landing. As the saying goes: What goes up must come down.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CLOUDS

A Prayer of Opposites, 48×48, acrylic

a prayer of opposites © david robinson

Filed under: DR Thursday, Metaphor, Perspective, Random | Tagged: artistry, big picture, creative tension, curiosity, cynic, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, human nature, Irving Berlin, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, optimist, perception, perspective, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Cross Check [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 31, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“It looks like a horses head,” she said, snapping the photo from her window seat on the plane. We were on approach to land, coming in over the bay.

I remember teaching myself to draw horses. I had (and still have) a passion for drawing people so my foray into horses was more an academic exercise than an inner need. I thought I should expand my horizons so the 8-year-old-version-of-me acquired a “how to draw animals” book. It suggested beginning with geometric shapes. Two connected circles defined the torso, the head – a circle and a trapezoid.

It was the same technique used by the teacher in my very first art class. See shapes. Arms are two tubes connected by a circle/elbow. Knees are circles, too! Foreground and background, what’s in front and what’s behind was taught using spheres and cylinders. Perspective was taught using a box. Transform a circle into a sphere through proper shading and you’ll know forever the magic secret of artistry. See a dragon in the clouds and you’ll know forever the magic secret of the human mind. It projects. It seeks sense from chaos. It projects order onto nature.

All the while Kerri is snapping photos of the island that looks like a horse’s head, I am pondering the normalization of hurtling through the air in a tube. People chat. Some are reading. The man across the aisle is asleep. “Prepare to land” is ordinary, uttered thousands of times each day. It’s the flip side of seeing dragons in clouds, another key to the human mind. Miracles made commonplace through repetition.

One human child is a miracle. It’s why we are making the trip. To meet a miracle. Yet, 7 billion miracles walking on earth?

“We’re flying,” I said.

“It’s been a long time,” she replied, showing me the picture on her phone, “Look! Doesn’t it look like a horse’s head? Well, like horse heads that I draw. No ears,” she qualified and smiled.

Miracles and magic. All the way around. Seen and unseen. Cross check. Wheels down. Prepare to return to the ground.

read Kerri’s blogpost about the HORSE HEAD

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Perspective, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: art class, artistry, background, chaos, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, flying, foreground, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, magic, miracles, nature, order, projection, seeing, story, studio melange, technique, the melange | 1 Comment »

Both/And [on KS Friday]

Posted on January 27, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

Dwight sent a book to me: From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks. Several months ago at dinner we talked about how to make this next chapter of life the best chapter. As is my practice lately, I am reading it slowly, taking my time. I used to read like a hungry man eats; I gobbled information. Now I savor. I take one bite at a time and taste all of it. Someday soon we will talk about what I am discovering in the book. I’m only a few chapters in and already I’m rethinking my choices, considering different paths moving forward.

Pondering my next steps has also been an exercise of looking at where I’ve been. A lyric from Dan Fogelberg just ran through my mind [The Last Nail, by Dan Fogelberg]:

I left a trail of footprints deep in the snow
I swore one day, I would retrace them
But when I turned around, I found that the wind had erased them
Now I’ll never replace them

With distance it’s easy to see that some of the worst choices I’ve made in my life have also been the best choices I’ve made in my life. I can see that my desperation brought innovation. I can see the prison I made of my judgments and the hard truths necessary to unlock my cell door. I can see I needed a broken heart to arrive at an open heart.

With distance, I’m beginning to understand that no single experience lives in isolation. No day is either “good” or “bad.” No single period of my life defines the worth or wealth of my time on earth. No title, like “artist,” can wrap its fingers around the totality of my time. I am all of those things and none of those things.

On Monday, we interred Beaky’s ashes. She is with Pa in the national cemetery. We sang a song and then an attendant closed the niche. A journey’s end. Later that day I jumped off the back of a couch into a pile of pillows with a two year old, laughing, wiggling our toes. This wild-child is in full discovery mode, everything an adventure. A journey’s inception.

This life is achingly beautiful, each and every moment.

The entire album: Released From The Heart © 1995 Kerri Sherwood

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEART DIVOTS

Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Perspective | Tagged: aging, Arthur C. Brooks, artistry, Both/And, broken heart, choices, Dan Fogelberg, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, delight, desperation, From Strength to Strength, heart, innovation, judgments, Kahlil Gibran, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, open heart, sorrow, story, strength, studio melange, The Last Nail, the melange, truth | 1 Comment »

Flip It [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 24, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Standing on the trail, the cold breeze stinging my face, I stared at the trees in silhouette. I was overcome with the illusion that I was observing the trees upside-down. I was seeing their tangled root system, reaching. My illusion made me dizzy. What’s top is bottom. What’s bottom is top.

I’ve been pondering things like “leadership” and “power”. My belief of these concepts is the reverse of most peoples. I think leadership is a team sport and that power is created with others, not wielded over them. Roots to the sky.

Before the software start-up went away I pondered things like the abundance of content with no relevant context. Information without a home. Information sans application. Information run amok. It requires people to make-up context for the rootless material crossing their screens. In contemporary discourse, we call this made-up context “bubbles.” It’s an apt term since popping is the destiny of every bubble. No substance. The Villages.

Thank goodness for the cold wind. It snapped me out of my flip-flop illusion. The silhouette was righted. I remembered the shadow puppets in Bali. What we see is projection on a screen. Silhouettes. The real stuff, ripe with dimension and color, the massive system of roots and vibrant moving energy, stars and flow, creating forms and taking them down, happens whether we see it fully or not.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SILHOUETTES

Filed under: Metaphor, Perspective, Power, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, bubbles, context, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, energy, illusion, information, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, perception, projection, roots, shadow puppet, silhouette, story, studio melange, systems, the melange, Wayan Kulit | 1 Comment »

Immerse [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 10, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

The bright green ring in the tree beckoned. A time portal. Climb the tree and slip through the hoop to another time. Another place. What will you find there? It was one of many awe-inspiring moments in the immersive light experience at the Chicago Botanical Gardens.

A few weeks ago Rob suggested that I consider producing immersive experiences and my walk through the Gardens started a thought-wander.

Immersive is a new word in town. Well, it’s an old verb sporting a new adjective meaning. It’s a tech term. Surrounding “the user” with a generated 3-D image. Wander around town and you’ll find Immersive Van Gogh or Immersive Monet or Frida Kahlo, also Immersive. Technically, escape rooms are immersive. So is Disney World. A 3-D created experience.

A walk in the woods cannot be considered immersive since no technology is involved.

Immersion, one step beyond immersive, is the “perception of being physically present in a non-physical world.” Virtual reality. Dreams might be considered immersive except, like nature, technology is absent so the experience cannot be considered virtual or immersion.

To immerse means to dunk yourself in liquid or to dive deeply into a passion. When I stand before my easel and brush color onto canvas, I leave the world as I know it. I immerse in my paintings, though viewers of my paintings are incapable of having an immersive experience with my less-than-3-D-paintings. Is paint a technology? When Kerri plays, she enters a transcendent place. She fills the room with energy and light and I am transported. Am I having an immersive experience? I believe so.

Rounding a bend the night we walked through the Garden we came upon a field of illuminated pillars, colors changing and hopping with the beat of the music. I told Kerri that I saw this very display 20 years ago in an art gallery, though the technology 20 years ago was new and not nearly as impressive as what flashed in the field in front of us. The pillar-field was alive and was both mesmerizing and familiar.

The Gardens themselves, sans lights and music, are immersive. Groomed and created, meant to transport us from our everyday lives. We oooh and aaaah every time we visit. An explosion of color in a petal. The shape of a leaf. The quiet of the grove.

I loved the lights, the heightened immersive experience. We’ll make it a tradition. I’m excited to immerse in Van Gogh or thrill my way through Cirque du Soleil. As for producing immersive experiences, I am content to smear color on canvas or fall head-long into a story. Or, best of all, walk our path through the woods. There is no greater transporter of time-and-space than to suddenly find myself eye-to-eye with a fox crossing the trail.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HOOPS

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, Chicago Botanical Gardens, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Disney World, dreams, Escape Room, expereinces, immersion, immersive, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, nature, non-physical world, stimulous, story, studio melange, technology, the melange, virtual reality | 1 Comment »

Throw Open The Window [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on December 21, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sometimes it feels as if we were shot into space for a few years and have come back to much changed Earth. Or, it feels like we were stranded on a desert island and are returning to places now strange in their familiarity. Reentry from isolation. Everything is changed. We are changed. The rituals of the season punctuate the strangeness.

We’ve been delighted to once again have dinner with friends. Unmasked. Unprotected. Indoors. I look at the faces of the people I love as we laugh and I think, “Oh, yes. I remember this.” The warmth of companions-in-life, reaching across time and covid boundaries. “We missed you,” we say, relearning who we are together. Our faces are older. Perhaps wiser in all that has passed.

Last year we drove to North Carolina. We arrived late in the day on Christmas. We walked through the small town, beautifully lit for the season, though seemingly abandoned. Our footsteps echoed off the walls. We were happy to be there, enjoyed the displays in the windows, we walked down the center of the street with no thought of possible traffic. We held hands. The absence of others was so normal that we didn’t think it odd that we had an entire town to ourselves.

This year is the mirror image, an alternate reality. People are out. We are out though the vestiges of isolation hang on us like Marley’s chain. We stop to take photos of the lights like ethnographers fascinated by the ceremonies of the locals. I found myself staring at the row of illuminated trees wondering what it represents. “Why can’t it just be pretty!” I admonished myself. “This is how people celebrate the season.”

And, aren’t we all looking for the moment that Scrooge awakes after a night of ghosts with new eyes and a deeper understanding of precious life, throwing open the window to the morning sun, hoping against all hope that he hasn’t missed it and asks, “Boy! You there! What day is it?”

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes or streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about LIGHTS

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: A Christmas Carol, alternate reality, artistry, boundaries, celebration, christmas, covid, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, hope, isolation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Marley, post covid, reentry, ritual, Scrooge, story, strange, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Get Some Perspective [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on December 7, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Oh, god…I feel a fit of moralizing coming on….” ~ Words to myself, uttered just a moment ago.

This would seem like a no-duh: perspective requires distance. Said another way: to see the mountain, one cannot be standing atop of the mountain.

Much to Kerri’s dismay, I think out loud about these things. A lot. She has to listen to my ruminating. Marriage requires her to be in the same space with me and I talk endlessly about the things rattling through my mind. Just ask her. Let’s just say she has no distance from my incessant blather so she lacks perspective. Or, her capacity to ignore my noise is the result of experience which provides her solid perspective. Don’t ask me. I am not in the position to offer an opinion.

When you dip your mind into the pool of information technology as I have, it’s nearly impossible to NOT think about the absence of perspective. Actually, if you read or listen to the news-of-the-day or take a swim in the social media cesspool, and are able to step back from it (thereby creating some distance), you’ll find that meaningful perspective has long ago fled the building.

For years I’ve been reading about the pace of change. At some point – and we’ve arrived at that point – the event horizon (that which enables perspective) is no longer in front of us. We sit on top of it. Information comes too fast and without pause. And, often without substance. Without perspective, the context of our lives is as fleeting and changeable as “Breaking News” or the latest posts on social media. Since the algorithms are driven by the most “likes” not the most relevant, the ugliest and loudest noise-makers garner the most attention and dominate the air-time (thank goodness for cute pet posts providing some humor in the onslaught).

Attention-getting is not known for its grounding in solid perspective. Just ask the boy who cried wolf.

As we know, crying wolf works well – for a while. Attention-getting is addictive. Once hooked, people will do or say anything to keep their buzz going. Sitting directly atop the event horizon, the only way to keep the attention is, of course, to scream louder and louder. Escalate the outrage. A news cycle churns as fast as the social media stream. Remember: the algorithms are not based on meaningful substance but on the ability to grab attention. Louder/uglier wins the day.

Without perspective, escalating outrage – the loudest and nastiest train wreck – will always win the attention grab. It’s human nature. We sort to the negative. It’s why we share complaints with anyone who will listen but dribble-out the good news to a select few.

There is an important disappearance that accompanies the loss of perspective: crap-detecting. Awash as we are in a raucous bluster of vapidness, the only hope we have is to take a step back and question. To descend from the event horizon and ask, “Is this or that assertion true?” Or, is it meant to make me mad, fuel my anger? Is it tailor-made for my perspective-less bubble?

Stepping back, gaining perspective, asking relevant questions. Crap-detecting. If a better world is what we desire to create, dedicated crap-detecting is the necessary first step in being-the-change we wish to make.

read Kerri’s blogpost on PERSPECTIVE