Hello <<First Name>>,
I’m delighted to share this March 2017 edition of Arts Awareness E-Newsletter with you. I sincerely hope you find it helpful as you play an active role in all your creative efforts. Please feel free to share it with others who might be interested, and if you know someone who may want to receive this newsletter monthly, please let them know how to sign up through www.artsawareness.com.
Big Things Happen in the Arts
Remarkable things happen when you allow yourself to become fully engaged with creating art or performing music. At every level, you learn how little things make big things happen. The arts allow you to experience things from a global perspective and to bring real world meaning to basic knowledge and skills. When you’re open to the artistic process, you can learn to expand the meaning you get from your experiences and transfer that knowledge to other situations. This is knowledge that can help you gain a deeper understanding of a variety of experiences in your daily life.
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
~ Vincent Van Gogh
 Here are three examples of big ideas that come from little things in the artistic process and how that knowledge can be transferred to everyday experiences to create a more fulfilling life.
- Everything is constantly and permanently connected. In the arts, you learn to experiment with the smallest elements—to see and hear how to make adjustments—so they work most effectively together to create a whole. In today’s complex world, this same process is necessary as we negotiate the complex social, economic and political links between people and the impact that even the smallest changes have on society as a whole.
- Patterns that exist in music and art help us see relationships. In an artistic experience, you gain an understanding of how patterns formed from the smallest elements create working relationships that function most effectively together. This experience can inspire an appreciation for patterns in everyday life experiences. You can use that knowledge to build and maintain positive and trusting relationships. It can help people make peace and resolve conflicts, leading one to value human rights and social justice.
- Everything can work together even if in different ways. All of the elements in creating art or making music work together to create a unified whole, but they do so in different ways. What an incredible lesson this is for gaining a deeper understanding of one’s self and culture and the contributions of those from other cultures.
 When you participate in creative endeavors and connect the skills and technical issues to the bigger picture all along, you learn that the artistic result can be expressed more quickly and effectively. People who do this tend to stay more involved; both the technical knowledge and the imaginative capacity they gain is more lasting. A friend recently mentioned that it was this kind of learning process in music classes that helped her see how passion and a sense of discipline can coexist. She learned that even the most passionate phrase has to have an underlying sense of order. She paid attention to the way things work, and the experience helped her understand how to live with freedom, yet with order.
So much about the art-making process is about paying attention.
~ Tara Donovan, site-specific installation artist
A watercolorist recently told a gallery audience that he learned to question things as he engaged with the artistic process and, as a result, he was able to see more deeply. As he questioned, he found he focused less on what “needed to be fixed” in his work and more on the bigger picture. He became more focused and aware, leaving space for his imagination to flourish. This process ultimately expanded and led him to consider even bigger, more global perspectives that positively impacted his life.
Artists and musicians learn to fully engage in the artistic process in ways that set up an endless cycle of expansion. They constantly add to their previous knowledge and, as they do, their awareness is taken to higher and higher levels. It expands their understanding of how things work. They question, observe, and change perspective. It’s an ongoing cycle that evolves throughout their creative lives. Every day in their efforts, they experience how the little things can truly make big things happen.
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
~ Bertrand Russell
|
