Quotes
Art is supposed to make our lives better. This is as true for the making of the art as it is for the art itself. If making your art is ruining anyone's life, including your own, it is not worth making.
Art is not only made from things that "spark joy." Art is also made out of what is ugly or repulsive to us. Part of the artist's job is to help tidy up the place, to make order out of chaos, to turn trash into treasure, to show us beauty where we can't see it.
"Dumpster diving" is one of the jobs of the artist— finding the treasure in other people's trash, sifting through the debris of our culture, paying attention to the stuff that everyone else is ignoring, and taking inspiration from the stuff that people have tossed aside for whatever reasons. [...] All it takes to uncover hidden gems is a clear eye, an open mind, and a willingness to search for inspiration in places other people aren't willing or able to go.
The ghost of Sir Felix Finch whines, "But it's been done a hundred times before!"—as if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void-Webber! As if Art is the What, not the How!
p. 357
A far more important lesson to learn from artists is not that they fail, but that they prevail. Artists make. Artists do.
The revolution needs artists, just like it needs healers and storytellers, just like it needs the organizers and protesters. It's all one big organism working together.
The foster parents had said that she would end up nowhere, then you could make up wherever you wanted to be, you could make it real. You could, for example, paint it into existence.
Everything, she noticed, seemed capable of transmogrification. Even the two boulders in the backyard sometimes turned to silver in the early morning sunlight. In the books she read, every stream might be a river god, every tree a dryad in disguise, every old woman a powerful fairy, every pebble an enchanted soul. Anything had the potential to transform, and this, to her, seemed the true meaning of art. (chapter 13 p188)
The photos stirred feelings she couldn't quite frame in words, and this, she decided, must mean they were true works of art. (p99)
When she asked Mia how she knew which images to put together, Mia shook her head. "I don't," she said. "This-this is how I figure out what I think...I don't have a plan, I'm afraid," she said..."But then, no one really does, no matter what they say." (Chapter 8, p91)
paintings
and books conceal more than they ever tell.
Weren’t there naive arts and sophisticated arts? And corrupt arts as well? And might that not be true of the sciences too? Could chemistry be more corrupt than botany? But that wasn’t so. It was the uses, the ends…
p. 142
