Craft

“It is reality itself which makes the difference.”

(Christopher Alexander)

I’m often paid to spend time in an unreal world.

It’s the case for many leaders, managers, teachers and designers. We inhabit a world of ideas, concepts and negotiations which only find expression through others or in the bureaucracy, administration and performance of abstract business ‘systems’.

Which can feel a long way from real of work and life. So I’ve been following a path that has taken me back to a closer sense of reality; where I meet a more ‘lived’ experience of my world.

The photograph of the leaf obscured path is from the #1000Steps project.

Photography has long been associated with travel; more recently, ‘adventure’ photographs have become especially prized. Which leads us to assume that excitement and enlightenment might be ‘out there’; if only we can travel to an exotic location to find it.

The challenge of #1000Steps is to find that inspiration more locally. In fact, within 1000 steps of my back door.

This confines me to the central chunk of our elongated rural village parish boundary but a ‘close adventure’ can often feel enticing. A simple constraint, coupled with the process of posting just one photograph each day, helps me keenly reflect on how I experience of my local reality.

When I make the #1000Steps photographs, I’m trying to hold myself open to moments of aesthetic experience that ‘catch’ me; typically with a sharp intake of breath or, at least, the anticipation of a ‘wow’ moment as a vista unfolds in front of me. I use a simple camera and photograph quickly; before I begin to ‘compose’ the image or consider what a good photo should look like. As the images make their way on to social media, one each morning, I’ve become curious at how sensitised I’ve become to the physical reality of my small part of this world and how human patterns have impacted the land. I’ve paused to simply witness the often overlooked, mundane beauty of life. And, as the season has shifted, I’ve felt how the passage of time permeates the world and seeps through my psyche.

The simple routine and discipline to this embodied, aesthetic process feels more crafted than artistic. It helps me reach into the physical complexity of my world, and brings me into a closer dialogue with my experience. I’ve lived in my village for years but, each day, I discover it anew.

Christopher Alexander tells us: “And it is in the end only when our feelings are perfectly in touch with the reality of forces, that we begin to see patterns which are capable of generating life.”

As I explore the photographic skills and sensitivities needed to make these little visual expressions of our life-generating patterns, I recall the notion that it might take 10,000 hours to develop a true sense of craft.

It will be time well spent.

Notes:

I thoroughly recommend Christopher Alexander’s ‘The Timeless Way of Building’ to anyone interested in how our lives pattern and interact with our environment. Ostensibly, this is a book about architecture, yet it is more than that, it delves deeply into the nature of experience, quality and timelessness.

Before the Renaissance, there was little no difference between our notions of art and craft. Take a look at Laura Morelli’s short TedEd animation, ‘Is there a difference between art and craft?’ which explores the history of how value has been assigned to visual arts in the western world.

Richard Sennet’s ‘The Craftsman’ reminds us that there is a craftsman in every human being and that this can be incredibly motivating and inspiring - as well as frustrating! He argues that motivation (those 10,000 hours?) is much more important that talent in consummating craftsmanship.

This blog has given me the excuse (again!) to thumb through John Lane’s ‘Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life’. He hopes that the world will be saved by beauty and writes:

“It is one of beauty’s sweetest attributes that its appreciation slows things down; it can never be savoured in a rush or a fret. Quite the opposite; its enjoyment depends on patience, silence, calm and respect. An openness of mind.

Yet it can be encountered anywhere and at all times: in a doctor’s waiting room, in a queue at the supermarket till, in a garden, in a train.”

And, finally, I do hope you can find time in your life to stand and stare:

“What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.”

(‘Leisure’ - W.H. Davies)