I wish I could manage to head over to Wired's NextFest this summer in Chicago. They've set up a little preview online for people like me to drool over.

I've always tried to spent as much time as possible with my kids after work and on weekends. The few hours between me getting home and them going to bed didn't seem to really be enough, though.

My relationship with the two youngest, Benjamin (10 months old) and Spencer (4 years old) has been totally different. I quit the corporate gig a month after Benjamin was born and have been working from a home office pretty much his entire life. Spencer is still home all day, he starts pre-school this fall. I get to hang out with the both of them more than I ever was able to with the older three.

Benjamin is walking now. I've seen him go from holding my hand to tottering off on his own the whole way. There was no call at the office from my wife, exclaiming that he's taking his first steps. I got to be there.

I can put him to sleep just as easily as his Mom. Unless he wants to nurse, that is. If he wakes up at night, I rock him back to sleep. I've never been so close to a baby before. I don't love him any more than Jordan, Gabriel, Jacob or Spencer. It's just I've spent a ton more time with him. It really been amazing.

Spencer and I are really good pals right now. We can watch cartoons in the morning together after everyone has left for school. And we have lightsaber battles at lunch. Things I was never able to do when I was a corporate ad agency wage-slave.

And to top it all off, I have a small baby kitten purring in my lap while I type this.

All of the projects and assignments I give out to my design students are concrete. I give them "real-world" limits and boundaries, in an effort to prepare them for the world they are about to enter. Sounds pretty reasonable, right?

The June issue of Metropolis Magazine contains an article by Philip Noble entitled "Swordplay. Why is architectural thought taught without the benefit of architectural fact?" Noble laments an occasion when he observed a beginning architectural class at the prestigious Pratt Institute. Essentially the student were told to watch fight scenes from the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero, analyze the movement and space and then create an environment inspired by it. His point is that while their work on this project was creative it was doomed because of the lack of "real-world" constraints. These assignments are only building a mental habit that ignores reality, Noble contends.

At first, I was right there with him. Yes, students need to be grounded in the basics of production, no matter what medium. But I thought about it more, my opinion changed.

Isn't there a benefit in the raw exploration of abstract creativity for the commercial designer (web developer, graphic design, architect, etc). Doesn't having moments of "play" provide someone with the "real-world" background in the produceable a point of new inspiration? I wrote earlier about designing within the grid and how having certain boundaries help to focus creative energies. I'm not going to dispute that, but I'm wondering about creating a piece that has no regard for how it could be constructed. Designing a web page that is so complex, it would take forever to load and be difficult to navigate. Pushing those boundaries happens frequently in the ranks of the pros, but is there a place in that process for a design/architecture/web design student?

Let's discuss this. How much exploration without boundaries should students really have? Does it enhance student's creativity to have them design without regard for production here and there, or does it just build bad habits, as Noble argues? Where is line to drawn?

Your thoughts?

Potter, sculptor, metal-smith, glass-blower. Tammy Garcia (more here and here) is an artist who's skill and style crosses into many mediums. Whatever form her work takes, it is easily recognized. The dynamic use of pattern and graphic elements combined with a bold sense of depth and dimension.



Coming from a long family heritage of Santa Clara potters, Garcia is hailed as one of the top Native American clay artists. Her vessels are striking in their shape and design. Taking traditional Pueblo symbols and shapes off the "canvas" of traditional pottery and raising them into a dimensional element adds that much more punch to the already brilliant design.



Having moved into bronze several years ago, her sculptures are just as eye-catching as her clay work. The same dimensionality and simple, bold design exists in this medium, on a much more dramatic scale.



To me, though, no matter what medium, Garcia's shape and design elements are what catches my attention. She is a master of combining the graceful with the kinetic forceful. She is represented by the Blue Rain Gallery in Taos, New Mexico.

"I need the challenge of trying new things. I don't want to repeat the same shapes and designs all the time. Sometimes the shape of a piece changes as I'm working on it, and I have to give in to the change. Sometimes the clay speaks, and I have to listen."

My work has always been based on simplicity and realism, but I've always been weaker in the more abstract elements, and I've often turned to the Native American artists in search of inspiration. Even by today's design standards, traditional Native American use of symbols and pattern is rich, effective and elegant.

Last my wife and I took our two youngest kids to the Kalamazoo Art Hop, an evening where all the galleries open up for a city-wide night of art and culture. We only took in two exhibits, but they were great:

"The Art of Dr. Suess: A Retrospective and National Touring Exhibition," an exhibit celebrating the 100th birthday of Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, one of my all-time favorite creative geniuses. The exhibit contains prints and paintings ranging from his early advertising work to original illustrations for his children's books to fine-art serigraphs. The work was as magical as you would imagine. My favorite was a series of simple portraits of these wacky imaginary animals done in loose watercolor. This is a traveling exhibit, so if it comes anywhere near, you should see it.


Self-Portrait As A Young Man Shaving
Hand-pulled serigraph on canvas
Image size: 12x16
Limited Edition of 850 with 55 proofs


Cat From The Wrong Side Of The Tracks
Hand-pulled Serigraph On Archival Panel
Image Size 24x44 Inches
Limited Edition of 850

"Art from the Heart" is a showing that I'm very close to. My mom is an art therapist that works with cancer patients, (many of whom are children). For the past several years, she and my father have curated an exhibit featuring artwork from cancer patients, their family members and health care professionals that work with cancer. Some of the artists are no longer here, some have loved one that aren't. Many aren't what most would define as "artists". The work ranges through all mediums.

Through projects like this that my mom and dad work on, I've gotten a unique view of how art effects people. There is an amazing healing power that comes from the creative process, especially from people that haven't ever really tried anything artistic. Camp Catch-A-Rainbow is a summer camp for kids with cancer and lukemia. My mom's workshops are always full as these kids express every emotion though the process to creating beautiful art.

For a couple of decades, many have made the analogy that the brain is like a computer. The idea is that the brain takes data from the senses and runs it through a number of "programs", providing everything from visual identification to numerical problem solving. Behavioral psychologists talk about our emotional responses being the result of "programs" that were created by our experiences. The developing brain of a child creates neural pathways to catalog every bit of sensory data. Repeated instances of certain stimuli strengthened already existing pathways and these are the basis for our very personal emotional reactions. There is even research on "re-programming" those emotional responses by changing speech patterns.

National Geographic's March issue cover story looks at some of the new ideas in brain research. One of the ideas that came out in one of the articles is that the brain really doesn't function as a single computer.

"In the old days, people said the brain is like a computer. I'd say no... It's very distributed, closer to the Internet."
-Arthur Toga, Director of the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at UCLA

That insight is interesting. Maybe not earth-shattering, but interesting nonetheless. To me, though, what was more though-provoking was how this relates to Vannevar Bush and the paper that led to the whole of idea of hypertext. Bush's concept of all the knowledge possessed by humankind stored in an array of "computers", each piece of information cross-referenced to other related data was entitled "As We May THINK" (emphasis mine). Not only did this man conceive of was to become the Internet in 1945, but he seems to have also inadvertently defined brain activity in a way that wouldn't be understood until the next century.