joshua chamberlain

Category: art

  • what is art?

    I’ve always loved Seth Godin’s definition: “Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen.” To me, this almost perfectly summarizes what constitutes art, the five key components being…

  • hoarding

    I’m a hoarder, but probably not the way you think. I don’t hoard clothes or magazines or collectibles or senseless junk. I hoard the things I create. Let me explain. A few years back, while working at a theater company, the Artistic Director told me about a critical inflection point…

  • show your work

    I’ve always been a believe in Austin Kleon’s idea that you should show your work. Don’t just share the finished product, share the process of making it. Document every step. Invite people into the process. Have conversations. Therefore, that’s what I’m doing… I just started writing a screenplay for a…

  • when I think about my death

    I’ve always wanted to die on a morning in June. I’ll lay in a comfortable bed, facing a window. Outside, the sun will dapple leaves with shades of green and gold. And I’ll smile and say a prayer of gratitude for the life I got to live, the people I…

  • fascination with adaptation

    I’m currently enraptured listening to Andy Serkis narrate JRR Tolkien’s The Fellowship of The Ring. It’s my first time through The Lord of The Rings and also my first foray into audiobooks. While my thoughts on the act of listening to a book is a separate blog post, the biggest…

  • all you can do is the work

    I’ve fought with my desire to control for years. We’re all hurtling through the world, like pinballs ricocheting off one another. While it’s reasonable to expect today will look a lot like yesterday, the truth is we’re thrust head-first into the unknown each morning. This is something I’ve always struggled…

  • on being the portal

    I’ve written about how the best art acts a portal, transporting us somewhere else entirely. Be it a story that takes us on a journey with its characters or a painting that swallows us whole, we engage with these works to get outside of ourselves. But what if we’re the…

  • not trying hard enough

    The last few days, I had this wild idea for an art piece that involved stenciling silhouettes, painted canvas, and melting crayons with a hairdryer. However, when I went to melt the crayons, the gust of heat from the hairdryer not only didn’t melt the wax, it detached the stencils…

  • unlimited freedom

    In a recent interview on obscurity, Austin Kleon had this to say about unlimited freedom when creating: …obscurity can be this great gift. You can experiment. It’s a kind of freedom. Now, unlimited freedom can be very paralyzing, too. Freedom is not necessarily the best thing ever for art; there’s…

  • Kleon on collage and discovery

    Austin Kleon on how one creative effort leads to the next: “That’s the beauty of collage and working with real materials: when you don’t have a plan, when you don’t know where you’re going, you end up somewhere you didn’t anticipate. It’s real discovery.” As my dad is so fond…