Outside

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[NOTICE:  I’m writing this in bed with a fever.  I claim no responsibility for what I write.]

I’m interested in artists who hand me their work on the street, who scare people, whose work is confusing and contradictory, and especially those who redefine our notions of art.  Art works, in and of themselves, are objects, but, for me, it’s my response to those works that makes them art.
Charging the Glandelinian Overlords

Jolene Charging To Battle the Glandelinian Overlords

The photo above reminded me of a conversation which took place about 15 years ago between myself and my friend Jerry.  I’d just met him (we’re still good friends, but don’t talk as much as we should) .  He loved to show me that my definitions, at that time, of social limits, cool, and status quo were all absurd.  He was right, too.  I had no idea what I was talking about.  I still don’t, and that’s what he taught me.  I’m always wrong as there’s always someone out there redefining normal and pushing the limits of what is acceptable.  Plus, Jerry was one of those people.  He’s not happy unless he’s redefining reality.  I find this fascinating and laudable.  The conversation started when I noticed he was carrying around some prints that didn’t quite make sense to me.  They were drawings of little girls with penises in some kind of fantasy world.  Having just met him, I was afraid to ask (which is a weird concept to me now as I’m a totally different person, today I’d just tear into a conversation with just about anyone).

After a week or so, he was still carrying them around.  I asked.  He explained they were the work of Henry Darger.  He also explained how Darger was a misunderstood artist who was institutionalized early in life and people generally misinterpreted his art as a form of pedophilia.  Turns out, Darger was autistic, abused as a child, and his art was an expression of his desire to protect children.  He was harmless.  He was also, quite possibly, one of the greatest artists who’s work is classified as outsider art.

The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut (French: [aʁ bʁyt], “raw art” or “rough art”), a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by those on the outsides of the established art scene such as insane-asylum inmates and children.[1][2]

While Dubuffet’s term is quite specific, the English term “outsider art” is often applied more broadly, to include certain self-taught or naïve art makers who were never institutionalized. Typically, those labeled as outsider artists have little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art institutions. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds.

Darger grew on me over those 15 years.  I studied him whenever I saw something that reminded me of his work.  I find I keep going back to it for some reason.

Henry Joseph Darger, Jr. (/ˈdɑrdʒər/; ca. April 12, 1892 – April 13, 1973) was a reclusive American writer and artist who worked as a custodian in Chicago, Illinois.[1] He has become famous for his posthumously-discovered 15,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story.[2] Darger’s work has become one of the most celebrated examples of outsider art.

I like that he created his work in total solitude.  I don’t know why I find that appealing.  I like that he unknowingly challenged the definition of art.  This led me to ask the question:  What is art?

“Someone dumped a pile of elephant shit in a museum and called it art.  I must live in art.  I’m surrounded by shit all day.”  — Stephanie Sicore when questioned about the work of Damien Hirst.

I remember when Hirst, Saatchi, and the Young British Artists made a stir back in the ’90s.  What I didn’t notice was the Stuckists who responded to Saatchi, conceptual art, and Duchamp.  They published several manifestos about the definition of art.  To me their argument boils down to:  Art is only painting with the product displayed in non-museum settings, without all the ego.  I don’t think art can be restricted to such a narrow definition.  To do so would be to make a subjective value judgement of the response one has to any work presented as art.  While I do not appreciate the work of Hirst (if you can call it his work because he usually isn’t the one actually doing the work), I believe I have no right to say something is or isn’t art.

Who am I to define what is normal, acceptable, or appropriate for another’s response in observation?  Who am I to question the value placed on response by another?   These are things I simply cannot control.  I’d rather relish the diversity and permit my own value response by taking the time to observe whenever I can.

Prestressing

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I’ve found art, engineering, and organizations have something in common:   Prestressing or pretensioning of environment, materials, or people to produce greater results.  In being creative, I’ve found prestressing is submerging myself into a process or exploring as many methods as possible with a medium in order to build a form of tension that allows me to sustain and produce.  In engineering, it’s the obvious use of prestressing materials in order to compensate for tensile stress:

Prestressed concrete is a method for overcoming concrete‘s natural weakness in tension. It can be used to produce beams, floors or bridges with a longer span than is practical with ordinary reinforced concrete. Prestressing tendons (generally of high tensile steel cable or rods) are used to provide a clamping load which produces a compressive stress that balances the tensile stress that the concrete compression member would otherwise experience due to a bending load. Traditional reinforced concrete is based on the use of steel reinforcement bars, rebars, inside poured concrete.

With a team you are leading, it’s preparing emerging leaders by placing your trust in their abilities beyond their own comfort–seeing beyond what they do now and giving them an opportunity to do more than they believe they can do.  You’ve been there, and you know they can do more because you once did more.  More means increasing impact by leveraging others, enabling teams to work together, or solving problems previously believed too difficult.

Austin ConstructionThe trust you place in them is just like tensile steel cable tendons, compressing and balancing the stress of leadership.  They become capable of building stronger bridges, longer spans, and bigger projects.

Prestressed concrete is the main material for floors in high-rise buildings and the entire containment vessels of nuclear reactors.

Unbonded post-tensioning tendons are commonly used in parking garages as barrier cable.[4] Also, due to its ability to be stressed and then de-stressed, it can be used to temporarily repair a damaged building by holding up a damaged wall or floor until permanent repairs can be made.

The advantages of prestressed concrete include crack control and lower construction costs; thinner slabs – especially important in high rise buildings in which floor thickness savings can translate into additional floors for the same (or lower) cost and fewer joints, since the distance that can be spanned by post-tensioned slabs exceeds that of reinforced constructions with the same thickness. Increasing span lengths increases the usable unencumbered floorspace in buildings; diminishing the number of joints leads to lower maintenance costs over the design life of a building, since joints are the major focus of weakness in concrete buildings.

The first prestressed concrete bridge in North America was the Walnut Lane Memorial Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was completed and opened to traffic in 1951.[5] Prestressing can also be accomplished on circular concrete pipes used for water transmission. High tensile strength steel wire is helically-wrapped around the outside of the pipe under controlled tension and spacing which induces a circumferential compressive stress in the core concrete. This enables the pipe to handle high internal pressures and the effects of external earth and traffic loads.

I’m seeing emerging leaders now, and I’m watching for opportunities to push them.  We have a lot of work to do.

Austin Sky

Religion of Light

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John Muir Trail

On John Muir, who’s name marks the trail Jolene is exploring above:

Of sensory perceptions and light

During his first summer in the Sierra as a shepherd, Muir wrote field notes that emphasized the role that the senses play in human perceptions of the environment. According to Williams, he speculated that the world was an unchanging entity that was interpreted by the brain through the senses, and, writes Muir, “If the creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us . . . we would never doubt that we were in another world. . . “[41]:43 While doing his studies of nature, he would try to remember everything he observed as if his senses were recording the impressions, until he could write them in his journal. As a result of his intense desire to remember facts, he filled his field journals with notes on precipitation, temperature, and even cloud formations.[41]:45

However, Muir took his journal entries further than recording factual observations. Williams notes that the observations he recorded amounted to a description of “the sublimity of Nature,” and what amounted to “an aesthetic and spiritual notebook.” Muir felt that his task was more than just recording “phenomena,” but also to “illuminate the spiritual implications of those phenomena,” writes Williams. For Muir, mountain skies, for example, seemed painted with light, and came to “…symbolize divinity.”[41]:45 He often described his observations in terms of light:

“. . . . so gloriously colored, and so luminous, . . .[44]:4-5 awakening and warming all the mighty host to do gladly their shining day’s work…[34] to whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.”[34]