Issue #16 – Work
ISSUE #16:
This week in MUSE: Meditations on the nature and value of Work.
CONTENTS:
• Emotional Labor
• Fan_of_KathyFan
• Creative Work
• To Do
• Aquarian
NEWS AND NOTES:
Here is a great quote by Aaron Copland about why we create;
“[Today’s artists] are the only ones who can express the spirit of what it means to be alive today.
That’s what makes the creation of art seem important. You’re not just expressing your own individuality. You, as a person, are an exemplar; you are one of the people living now who can put this thing down. In another twenty years … the world experience will be different, so the need becomes very pressing. You have a sense of urgency, of being occupied with something essential and unique. To leave our mark of the present on the future — what could be more natural?”
Recommended Readings:
• “Pictures of Garbage”, by Vik Muniz. Also, the documentary film “Wasteland”.
• “Blindness”, by Jose Saramago.
• “If”, by Rudyard Kipling.
• “The Third Self: Mary Oliver on Time, Concentration, the Artist’s Task, and the Central Commitment of the Creative Life”, by by Maria Popova.
If you watch the television show Wheel of Fortune you may remember Shirley aka ‘Possum’, a contestant on the January 23rd broadcast. Her charming description of her work as a pharmacy tech and delivery driver encoded everything I recount in Emotional Labor, about Kentucky and caring.
Credits:
Cover art: Rube Goldberg Machine Cartoon (excerpt). Original by Bryant Arnold at cartoonaday.com.
Emotional Labor: Steampunk Trinket Box.
Creative Work: photo by Bruce Wujcik.
Fan_of_KathyFan: School of Aristotle. Fresco by Gustav Adolph Spangenberg, 1883-88.
To Do: Checklist Icon.
Aquarian: Aquarius constellation diagram.
Emotional Labor
A while ago a friend sent me a link to a forum of women discussing and sharing thoughts about emotional labor. I clicked and within a few seconds of scanning the table of contents I almost lost it. My heart raced, I got hot, my head felt like it would explode and I said to Bruce, who was standing right there, “Omg, I can’t even read this, I’m so angry I’m going to break something.”
I love Bruce,
Fan_of_KathyFan
Matt, I have been lurking on OT for several years, and lately following you daily. I appreciate so many of your contributions, they spark a lot of reflection and dialogue. Right now I have many ideas and responses piling up that connect to your most current preoccupation – your Dream. I hope PM is an appropriate way to share my thoughts with you (I just can’t bring myself to post, besides, tl;dr, lol). If it starts a conversation GREAT,
Creative Work
With all of the work this past year launching MUSE, establishing writing as a daily practice AND getting all of my backlogged ideas and products out in the world, I haven’t spent as much time making art as I used to. But now that issuing MUSE is more routine, I have time again in studio. For this issue about work, I thought I would share the process and craft of making a paper painting. Here are a few in-progress photos of the first in a new series about Iceland.
To Do
Just to capture a moment in time, personally and culturally, here are the minutiae of the next few weeks. On our schedules:
Take the old chest to the antique restorer
Pick up the police accident report
Submit claims
Birthday Brunch with E and K
Take Adie to the Princess and the Frog
Built-in cabinetry (linen) design to Casey
travel for work (San Diego)
Snowshoeing with Printha,
Aquarian
January is also the month of Bruce’s birthday. Here is the card I made for him.
Emotional labor, right?
