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Everyday Beauty
I’ve been making a few presentations lately for my teaching at the Snowboarders DTS coming up in Oxford. I love putting together simple, meaningful and well designed teachings that make sense and change lives. Or at least I hope that’s what I’m doing. In this way, I’m trying to make the everyday things I do, a little more beautiful, a little more ‘artistic’.
I’m not a great designer or a fantastic artist. I have worked with many people who are amazing at creating excellent design, art, poetry etc. But I’m not that guy. I’m a compiler. I can choose a theme and pick the appropriate elements to put something together that communicates, usually taking from other forms or ideas. I don’t originate well visually, I just want to create clarity and beauty from what’s already been made.
And that’s cool with me. There is a place for every day beauty. It’s not “low art”, or menial, just practical and appropriate. However, it’s taken me some time to accept my limitations and strengths. There’s a certain vibe that comes with design and art. A standard which speaks for or against the things we create. I think most of us feel this standard when we judge ourselves too harshly when creating something.
High art and low art
Hans Rookmaaker identified that before the “Age of Reason” and The Enlightenment, art was simply the every day occurrence of quality and beauty. The design of value in the ornamentation of homes and churches, the craftsmanship of toys or sculptures, this was what people gave to each other as common courtesy. It was natural to design a shoe that would be both beautiful and last for 20 years, or a tapestry in a church that would inspire reflection. All of this was beauty for the day, it was the art of creation.
As the Enlightenment took hold, art became a kind of religion, exalted and rarified. Even worse, science and art became two distinct cultures which still exists today. The net result was that the artist became a genius. A rare exception to the rule with rare talent that could give the world something almost religious. It needed to be as God was being reasoned out of the equation. From this process, Rookmaaker says we developed the concept of art with a capital A, or high art. The snobbery begins.
So instead of the common guy (or girl of course) creating works of art every day in whatever they did, you had the centrifugal or centripetal approach to art. ‘Whatthe!’ you say? Allow me. Before the Age of Reason, artists were everyday people who worked in guilds to craft things like statues, grave monuments, wall paintings, reliquaries, lamps, stalls, paintings, books, houses, stained-glass windows etc. They made a simple living by giving quality and beauty back out to the community. They worked in a centrifugal style, always pointing out to the object. For instance, the guy that carved the small heads in the cathedral in Strasbourg never signed his name. In fact, back then, only the sculptor would even know of the quality of their work as most people could not see it 100 meters above the floor. They did it for the church, for the community, for God.
After the Enlightenment, artists had to stand above the crowd in order to ‘make it’ or to even be appreciated. The work they created had to draw fame to their name and so they worked in a centripetal style, the work always pointing back to themselves. This formed a gap between the genius and the starving artist. So today, art is in the museum, and only the genius is recognized. But for the work I do? Like Erika Badhu says, “There ain’t gon be no buildings named after me”.
So thus we have the age of snobbery, of comparison, where you wouldn’t call yourself an artist or artisan unless you thought you were amazing. (PS. God thinks you’re amazing.) So that’s why it’s taken me a while to accept that I can create everyday beauty through food, presentations, a good conversation…
Hey, here’s an idea. Let’s not be marginalized by the priestcraft of the arts. Let’s apply the perspective we have with the care we can give to the tasks we face each day. In this way, we love our neighbor by designing a better car seat, laying out a nice table of food, or creating a better frappe. I for example, have mastered the espresso double dark chocolate mint frappucino for the simple joy of making my guests gasp with excitement.
Back to our friend Hans. He also said that the way we create art is through talent, intelligence, character and application. My interpretation: The talent is whatever God has given us to invest. The intelligence is how we improve on the gift with education and testing. Character is staying right with God and man in the process and application is doing whatever our hands find to do with all our hearts. In this way, we get to create works of art every day.
So do you like my art for the week?
My friend Becky sent this to me:
You’re killin’ me. Don’t hold out on the goods to make what you claim is a mind-blowing glass of icy-coffee greatness! It’s hot here; we need sustenance!
Recipe, please!
So here’s the goods.
1. the gear:
*you gotta have a good blender with at least one blade turned down. This crushes the ice completely.
*two piece italian espresso coffee maker. the kind you put the water into on the bottom, coffee in the middle filter and then screw on the top
2. the technique: place three teaspoons of espresso into the coffee maker. Apply around 30lbs pressure. there’s an art to getting the right flavor.
3. the timing:
* once to espresso is made, dump two heaped tablespoons of pure cocoa into the cup of coffee you just brewed so it melts into the coffee.
* place the coffee in the freezer for around 15 minutes
4. Add to the blender:
* 1 to 2 cups of ice (depending on how icy you like it)
* 1 cup of full cream milk (never ever drink homogenized low fat milk of any kind, ever.)
* 1/4 to 1/2 cup of cream (just because you can)
* 3 scoops of dark chocolate ice cream
* 4 to 5 tablespoons of Monin Chocolat Menthe syrup. If you don’t have this, use Creme de Menthe, but no cheap mint extracts, it ruins the flavor
* add the coffee from the freezer
5. Sit back and enjoy the icy goodness, but only once a week. More than this would be wrong.
— Patrick Jul 25, 01:56 PM #
thanks for the recipe!
i love the idea of a centrifugal mindset in the way we approach our work – would love to implement that more in my thinking and creating.
can you recommend a hans rookmaaker title for further reading?
— Jörg Butzer Jul 31, 01:50 AM #
Rookmaaker wrote a number of really good things. The last thing he published is in the public domain and I made a pdf of it so you can download it here.
“The job of art is to chase away ugliness”
Bono
— Patrick Aug 3, 12:38 AM #
Why is it bad to drink homogenized milk? Chocolate isn’t healthy either, is it?
Just wanna know to live healthier.
— Karina Aug 10, 09:31 AM #
Hi Karina
Homogenization is a process to keep fat from rising to the top of milk. It’s purely for aesthetic reasons. But in the process, the fat content of the milk is reduced to such small platelettes that it slips by your bodies ability to catch and use fat. Instead, it goes through these defenses and does more harm than good. Full cream unhomogenized milk is the best for you if you want to drink milk at all. I learned this from a great book called What the Bible Says About Healthy Living by a guy named Russell. I suggest everyone read it, it’s the best I’ve ever seen on the topic.
Chocolate like anything else can be bad for you if you have too much. What I like is getting Chocolate that’s at least 70% cocoa solids so there’s not much else besides real chocolate in it. And yes, cocoa is good for you but like the old saying goes, all things in moderation…
— Patrick Aug 10, 06:35 PM #
Thanks for the answer, Patrick!
— Karina Aug 14, 09:38 AM #
Hey Patrick. I love your new visuals for teaching. I’m staffing a DTS now and there’s not a week that goes by that I wish we could’ve got you here to teach identity stuff. I keep seeing how so much comes back to it. I talk about it constantly but still have so much to learn.
Mmmm… pregnant lady says…. I wish I was enjoying a frosty, minty, chocolaty dodson drink concoction at a large wooden dodson kitchen table with the latest play list enhancing the experience.
Val
— Val Oct 28, 07:55 PM #