Creativity

Too often, we think of notebooks as a way-station: a necessary stop en-route to the perfected, polished work of art. But what if the notebook is the work of art? What if the process of taking notes is the point?

I even resisted sitting at a desk, so my studio mates rarely saw me, and most of my work was done in nature, underneath trees, by the water, and sometimes in cafés, galleries, and the botanical garden. And the rest was a vast, empty space that I didn’t know how to navigate any more than I knew how to start drawing from a blank piece of paper.

To illustrate the difference between art and technique, he tells the story of two people who each make a glass cup: the first person designs a fine, functional glass from which one can drink perfectly, but the second person, an artisan, creates another glass cup that is so special, it generates an emotional reaction.

The Greeks would say the second... See more