Category: Uncategorized

I, Pencil by Leonard Read, is an essay on the life cycle of a pencil. Written in a way that references all the strings attached and people involved in the back-story of this simple, everyday object; this story is an excellent text to tie products to global social and environmental concerns. And it was written in 1958.

“Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others.”

I, Pencil is referenced in this TED talk by Matt Ridley about the collective effort that leads to innovation,

A work by artist Pierre Huyghe, entitled ‘Timekeeper’ uncovers a history of exhibits in this space at the Walker Art Center through sanding down layers of paint on the gallery walls.

This work is especially interesting in the context of a white-walled exhibition space: the walls are usually forced into the background in order to highlight the work hung on them. In this case, the very history of that back-drop is what’s highlighted.

The work is part of the Walker’s exhibition, The Quick and the Dead;

Surveying art that tries to reach beyond itself and the limits of our knowledge and experience, The Quick and the Dead seeks, in part, to ask what is alive and dead within the legacy of conceptual art.

Heart of the Beast theater in Minneapolis held a festival to welcome the water back into the lobby. – For years, the drinking fountain in the building’s lobby had not been functioning. To support their belief that water should be a clean, free and part of the public commons, the theater has focused on water-themed programming to raise funds to repair their fountain. And at last, what a fountain it is.

This is an example of a background story taken to the forefront: the mosaic visual magnificently overwhelms the source of initial inspiration. This is fitting as the concept the theater highlights is that water is the source of all life: direct from mother earth herself. The mural haloing the fountain quasi-indicates to the spirituality surrounding water.

If not entirely straight-forward, the visual illustration allows the viewer to create their own story about water: Whether that story is a quest for spirituality, native tradition, or catalogs the historical significance of H2O.