Showing only Notes & Links tagged quotes on art, design, creativity and, technology by Casey A. Gollan

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.

In an autobiographical essay the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz speaks of his “inner certainty” as a young writer “that a shining point exists where all lines intersect…This certainty also involved my relationship to the point,” he tells us. “I felt very strongly that nothing depended on my will, that everything I might accomplish in life would not be won by my own efforts but given as a gift.”

Not all artists use these very words, but there are few artists who have not had this sense that some element of their work comes to them from a source they do not control.

I am fascinated,” I insisted, “That’s the problem. I am suffering from fascination burnout. Of all the things that are fascinating, I have to choose just one or two.

The gift and the group are two separate things; neither stands for the other. We could say, however, that a copper is an image for the life of the group, for a true image has a life of its own…The tribe and its gift are separate, but they are also the same.

The first salmon ceremony establishes a gift relationship with nature, a formal give-and-take that acknowledges our participation in, and dependence upon, natural increase. And where we have established such a relationship, we tend to respond to nature as a part of ourselves, not a stranger or alien available for exploitation. Gift exchange brings with it, therefore, a built-in check upon the destruction of its objects; with it we will not destroy nature’s renewable wealth except where we also consciously destroy ourselves…Gift exchange is the commerce of choice.

A work of art is a gift. The gifted artist contains the vitality of his gift within the work, and thereby makes it available to others. Furthermore, works we come to treasure are those which transmit that vitality and revive the soul.

By design, a text makes a statement as to how it should be read – or if it should be read at all.

A text set with ample whitespace is confident. A text printed on smooth paper is deserving. A text set with a comfortable line length and appropriate leading demands to be read, not skimmed. A text wrapped in cloth deserves to be held, not discarded.

The web cannot replace the printed text any more than the car can replace the bicycle. Rather, they each have their place.

What is given away feeds again and again, while what is kept feeds only once and leaves us hungry.

Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that. (Pretty soon, you’ve got something.)