Spaceship Earth

I have a long history with Buckminster Fuller (“Bucky”) which I should probably write a blog post about. Learning that he taught at Black Mountain College has brought me full circle and I’ve started reading this book which I bought at a library sale. It’s been on my shelf for years.

Here are some favorite bits from the first chapter.

This is probably more true now than when he wrote this in 1969. We are stuck with so many outdated systems and the process of updating them seems painfully slow.

This first sentence:

My new project, the one this research is driving, is a bit “grand.” This felt like a mentor telling me I wasn’t dreaming too big. That the world is thinking to small (narrowly.)

I think he’s talking about Paulo Freire here who, “introduced the 'banking' concept of education whereby he equated teachers with bank clerks and saw them as 'depositing' information into students rather than drawing out knowledge from individual students or creating inquisitive beings with a thirst for knowledge”. (University of Bedfordshire)

I’ve done a lot of reading on educational theory and pedagogy and all the good stuff points here. (As a nerdy sidebar it’s also an approach that feels very Merlin, “Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.")

Everything comes back to kindling our own curiosity. Even as society wants to stamp it out.

The last part reminds me of submitting my piece about Asynchronous Friendship to an academic journal The editor told me I was neither “fish nor fowl” (solely academic or solely creative).

Why do we have to be one thing or another? Why can’t artists draw from academic studies? Why can’t academics include creative works?

In the end there was more flexibility considering my work a creative piece, but it shows a weakness in academia from my perspective. And I think both Bucky and Black Mountain College would agree.

Making for Survival

Making is truly a self regulation tool for me.

So I’ve been turning to ways we can fold art and making into our days.

Davy is finally to that magic age where he can sit at the table with me and draw or stand at the counter and mix sourdough starter. This is the part of motherhood I was most looking forward to so I’m glad he’ll be home and we can have more adventures together.

I make art all the time, but at some point I became scared of drawing. Growing up and in undergrad courses I drew all the time. I never questioned whether I could draw something or if it was any good. I just got on with it.

Then I went a decade or so without drawing.

Now I feel incredibly rusty.

But (rust and all) I sat down at the kitchen table with Davy and joined The Good Ship Illustration’s art club. What I love about drawing is how simple it is. It’s not messy. It’s not stressful. And it’s perfect for parallel play.

Art club was all about continuous line drawing.

I find this way of drawing to be an exercise in seeing.

I used Davy’s Stabilo Woody pencils and the chunky bold lines meant I couldn’t be precious about it.

But also there’s something alive about this way of drawing that my old perfectionist self never tapped into.

Since that day we’ve pulled out our sketchbooks and drawn together most afternoons.

I foresee lots of drawing at the kitchen table in the weeks to come.

Maybe I will remember how to see.