Notes & Links by Casey A. Gollan on
art, design, creativity and technology on
process

 
What we call our Train of Thought is more like a Tornado of Thought—a huge, swirling mass capable of picking up cows, fenceposts, salsa, and talcum powder with no single purpose, yet moving in one general direction at any given moment…and much of the best modernist work presents us with a simulated storm of information and experience.
Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination, p. 140

Fra Mauro’s Mappamundi, 1459, from Maps of the Imagination by Peter Turchi

Historically significant because:

Mauro’s map, oriented with south at the top, and dense with drawings and text, represents the transition from medieval mapping, which presented as much Christian dogma as geography, to the scientific mapping of the age of discovery.

But on a more personal level:

In the novel A Mapmaker’s Dream, James Cowan imagines the attempt of Fra Mauro, an actual fifteenth-century cartographer, to draw what he hopes will be a definitive map of the word, based not only on existing maps but on the stories of travelers from around the world. He learns that there are an infinite number of ways to depict reality. As the magnitude of this realization settles in, he writes, “My map absorbs me with what it does not reveal.” Later, despite or because of his efforts to be comprehensive, he tells us, “I am left with a sense of existing in an unfathomable void, surrounded by blankness.”

Visited Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s studio today and got to walk around inside (in funny foam slippers). Lee painted on the walls and Jackson worked on the floor.

Like all blanks, associative leaps through space need to be created. We must understand what makes electricity arc through the air. A conscientious reader confronted with a string of unrelated passages separated by blanks will, for a while, dutifully attempt to form bridges from one passage to the next, to discover the writer’s logic or pattern, the work’s intended accumulation. If no such thing is discernible, however, the reader will eventually, understandably, move on to something else. Such is the risk of communicating through silence. The rewards include the powerful bolt of understanding a leap can create, an understanding that reaches the reader beyond words, beyond rational explanation, and so is more intensely felt.
Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination: the Writer as Cartographer, p. 55

Fun and Nourishing by Frank Chimero

Related sad news (via Phoebe): Morrie Yohai, “the man behind Cheez Doodles,” has passed away at 90.

All the Presidents’ Doodles

We imagine White House meetings to be efficient and focused on grave matters; we don’t imagine the president dithering, daydreaming, or making idle scribbles—especially during moments of national crisis. But presidents, like the rest of us, doodle. Dwight Eisenhower drew sturdy, 1950s images: tables, pencils, nuclear weapons. A Herbert Hoover scrawl provided the pattern for a line of rompers. Ronald Reagan dispensed cheery cartoons to aides. John F. Kennedy reportedly doodled the word poverty at the last cabinet meeting before his death.

In an age of politics as scripted spectacle, these doodles, made without speechwriters or focus groups, promise a glimpse of the unguarded president. Because their meaning may be opaque even to the doodler himself, they invite us to interpret them—as befits our democracy—as we wish.

From a book of Presidential Doodles published by Cabinet in 2006.

(via austinkleon)

I find it weird to meet writers who aren’t also big readers. Met one the other day at a bar and I looked at him queerly. He said he couldn’t find the time. This reminded me that readers are probably my people first, before writers. Writers are more likely to be dicks.

Rosecrans Baldwin

(via austinkleon, meaghano)

Stamps of Disapproval by Heather K. Phillips

Gone are the days of tearing work from the wall. These days, disapproval often takes the form of ambiguous encouragements. Put the language of critique in your hands with this series of 12 rubber stamps. Each stamp bears of fragment of abridged feedback associated with critique.

(via @robgiampietro)

What’s great about looking at your work is the emotion comes back. The emotion comes back. The rhythm of what you were photographing comes back. It’s almost like a musical score. You can see where I may have quit too soon, or stayed too long. Or was bored and took a lot of pictures of nothing because I wanted to put film through the camera. All kinds of things are working when you’re looking at the contact sheet. Also, you see old girlfriends and friends and your children going up and my hairline receding.
Bruce Davidson, in an interview with the New York Times
What looked like an impossible problem wasn’t a problem after all; we’d just gotten twisted up in the way we talked about it.
Tim Carmody, on how a change of grammar can be a change of perspective.