I'd left my "Just Do It Badly" tiny prints around in public a couple days ago--mostly tucked in signs outside, but here on a magnets-for-sale board in a fancy grocery store:
I didn't linger. Only when I got home did I register the magnet "Consider everything an experiment".
They don't give credit, and anyone could say that, but pish-tosh, that's Corita Kent!
Rule Four of her Ten Rules. (I'd posted about Kent just yesterday. She's always inspired me.)
Kent, then Sister Mary Corita, created these in the early 1960s in collaboration with her art students at Imaculate Heart College. Calligrapher David Mekelburg lettered the words, and they hung in Corita's classroom.
You can find these at Design Manifestos, and many more suchlike. (But not Bread & Puppets'--see end of post.)
THE ONLY RULE IS WORK
This is what I've slowly, s l o w l y discovered in life.
Do your work. I wrote "Do It Badly" because I find that encouraging--it gives me permission to DO IT; but the point is, really, hopes and fears of good-or-bad results can limit you (me) before you (we) even start.
It's not that those aren't real categories--obviously we consider some of our work pleasing, or rubbish-- but those judgments are for later (if at all).
A couple people let me know they couldn't read my print "just do it badly". That could even be a good thing? I suceeded in doing it badly!
Naw--the point is, I did it, and that's me learning how to do it.
Marz wrote,
"I like it!! It's barely legible which is why I like it!
Looks like symbols but legible! "
Maybe there will be more than one? It will say something like,
printed in black on top of a bright "32 oz."
And/or...
(and the pursuit of happiness)
Heh, that reminds me--I've stumbled onto "oddly satisfying cleaning" videos... Some of them are disturbing (especially the ones of mental illness manifested in people's beyone-dirty homes), but I LOVE the ones of people cleaning up yards. Cutting down years of ivy, for instance, that has smothered all other growing things.
"Blow away the dreams that tear you apart.
Blow away the dreams that break your heart.
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted."
Bruce Springsteen, ya know. Here, performing "The Promised Land" in Paris 1985.
At the very end, Bruce says,
"You're responsible for the shameful things
and the glorious things
that happen under your flag."
I had Rule 7 on a page I gave out in all my classes about how to do well. I like it that Rule 7, preceded and followed by others, is identified as “the only rule.” I’ve read that the rules were a collective effort by CK's students — maybe not. But only one of them comes from John Cage, that’s for sure.
ReplyDeleteFRESCA here.
DeleteI looked more closely Michael and found
“In the 1960s, artist, educator, and social justice advocate Corita Kent asked her students to collectively reimagine what a learning environment could be. Their contributions comprised the now widely recognizable Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules (commonly referred to as “Ten Rules”).”
PS. Source
Deletehttps://www.corita.org/tenrules
I love your- What are you so thirsty for?
ReplyDeleteCould also be -what ARE you thirsty for?
Steph
Thanks—that’s it exactly (ambiguity)!
Delete