One Hand Gesticulating

Ciro has insisted that the plants be named, so they are now Oregano Port Arthur, Gentleman Basil, and Rosemary Rose Marie.

It looks like I'm going to be leading a number of free open-to-all workshops at the Dallas Museum of Art in April, where my key value seems to be not in passing on film techniques but in showing how I, an artist, approach art, both my own and others'. It's easy to demonstrate expertise in something concrete, like using a camera. It's hard to demonstrate an expertise in my basic approach to the world. I suppose I have to rely on the intrinsic value of the approch. To steal a page from Protestantism, not me but God through me. What matters is not ways I am different from other people but the ways we can all be our best.

I've been asked to come up with a two-line statement that represents my approach to art, and I'm a long way from getting there. So far, I've managed to get the core of it down to this:

Art - like science, business, or parenting - demands curiosity, rigor, and compassion.
Curiosity is the root of innovation.
Rigor is the foundation of craft.
Compassion forms the bond between artist and audience.
When art fails, it is usually a failure of one of these three things.
This is not to suggest that failure is always preventable or frightening.
Failure can be a new source of compassion and curiosity, and rigor should never become a source of brittleness.

I don't know how to make that shorter or whether it really gets at everything. I will have to dig into my Zen Koan mind.