This'll Keep You Humble: keeping it real

There’s nothing like wearing your shirt inside-out…..at a new freelance job, smack dab in the middle of a bustling morning street commute downtown, riding a crowded elevator to heaven, getting yourself morning coffee in the active kitchen and having several conversations with employees before you notice….to keep you humble and grounded.

Today I met Jeanne-Claude and Christo

I don’t mean to brag but Jeanne-Claude touched my headphones in Salida Colorado. What an AMAZING duo those two. So warm and present. Authentic to the core. I have always admired their works of art. So fluid, so emense, so beautiful. They completely define passion, love, commitment, respect and vision. Experts at enrollment and relating, I now think maybe the real art of their work—no less important—is the years— and decades in some cases— it takes to have a project realized. 19 projects realized at 72 years of age. 37 failures. 37. Money spent, emense energy and a vision—trying to enroll goverments for permits and it’s citizens to step outside of what they think they know about art and about their environment. Looking at thhe world around them, a world most have thought they have really seen a million times, everyday, in a different way. The scale is emense. The beauty even bigger. The two artist tirelessly give themselves to their projects, self-fund and provide a look at the world for us that takes my breath away, capturing the fluid gentle whispers of the breezes they share. I am better for having met them and shared my uninterupted minutes in conversation with them.

Let’s hope the project goes through. It’s slated for 2011 (at the earliest). The locals aren’t fond of it, yet few of them ask questions even when they had the opportunity to join in an evening with them in a small auditorium. Christo and Jeanne-Claude spend an enormous amount of money–their own—getting intensely detailed environment impact studies done leaving no stone unturned (or river rock as it were, pardon the pun). I saw the sketches of the project and photos of the land surveying.

It’s going to be BEAUTIFUL!!!!!

The thing about those two. No matter how much their projects are opposed by locals, after the project is realized, nobody hasn’t been completely, positively shifted for the better, after experiencing it. "Rock" on you two visionaries. Rock on.

A Fall Day in Minnneapolis

See

I’m an artist and designer. Always looking, always seeking, always questioning my view of my world.

I notice how much our listening of the world dictates HOW we see. Do we see life as literal, factual, determined for us or a delicious invite into exploration and intrigue? Where do we get stopped in life by our predisposed views of the world we walk through? How is what we see and how we see dicated by our culture? By our automated machine called human? When do we let go and really BE in the moments of seeing?

We are seeing all the time. Even blind people see. Where does seeing come from? Yep, there’s the physical mechanics of how we see. The cones, etc. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. That’s not what I’m interested in.

I’d say seeing is active. Our minds are always churning meaning from what we see into how we see. We are thinking, feeling Beings (some more, or less, than others, heehee). Assessing, reassessing, judging the world we walk through. Seeing triggers all the senses. That is what moves us with art and music or watching a tender moment between two people or a sunset. We all are engaged, or not engaged, for very different reasons. We hear with our eyes and see with our ears. I’ll say it again…..we HEAR with our eyes and SEE with our ears.

I ask YOU…what is seeing? What are you seeing and how?