Art

"There are certain things people in the arts know how to do - and I mean all the art forms, and more, as you will read. We take these skills and habits of mind and heart for granted, rarely honoring them or ourselves with any unusual value. Yet we rely on these skills to make our art, to draw others into our artistic offerings and to fill daily life with the kinds of experiencing - thinking, feeling, creating - that makes daily life worthwhile.

In my work, I refer to three essential actions of art: making worlds (the acts of creating coherent new wholes that make the world a better place), exploring worlds (entering into worlds that others have made to explore and discover what they have to offer), and reading the world (using the skills of art in daily life to play with, make sense of, explore the realities we encounter). I get frustrated when people in the arts limit the enormity of these capacities to artistic media. Of course, paint, dance, music, language and theater are the richest media in which to make and explore worlds. Of course, the creations in those media hold most of the greatest accomplishments of human achievement. But the work of art, the playground of artistic skills, is so much larger than just the media. Artists make worlds in all media, including relationships, schools, homes, and daily encounters. And creative people who would never think of themselves as artists engage similarly in the work of art in their everyday media. The work of art is the biggest contribution humans have to offer to the future, and artists are its experts. "

by Eric Booth.