Apple pie and the wild animal in you
Feed the beast.
I’ve been eating apple hand pies since Saturday.
My friend, Fran, makes them and was selling them at a pop up Saturday morning. I bought three. I yelled at the crowd to buy them, too. There is something about a pie you can hold in your hand. Fran is threatening to take me on the road with her as her traveling pie saleswoman. I imagine myself walking around with a basket of pies.
It’s easy to love what you love.
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Tell me more about why you love kid art, Marsha said. This, after she asked me what kind of art I like. I love Miró, Rauschenberg…I love a sketch vs a finished work, I said. I love a sense of playfulness, simplicity. I love art as language. I love kid art.
Kid art…tell me more about that, she said.
There’s an aliveness and a poetry to it, I told her. And an implication of something beyond what you see. A kid will draw a stick figure with a few squiggle lines and tell you it’s a monster from Mars swimming in a lake of worms!
Lynda Barry talks about kid art, about the grace to the scribbles we make, about how our drawings leave behind a 2D record of not just how we moved our hand, but how our hand was moved by something inside of us. How that thing is unnamable but recognizable. How it feels right and even helpful.
What is that thing?
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The other week, I tagged along to Emily’s art class. She teaches a small group of seven-year-olds. After class, one of the boys said, when I’m here, I forget what time it is and where I am. It’s like everything disappears!
That’s the thing.
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If we love a thing, we must feed it.
With listening, with attention, with time.
With apple hand pies.
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Try whatever you want to try, Jerry Saltz says. Sizes, tools, materials, subjects, anything. Don’t resist something if you’re afraid it’s taking you far afield of your usual direction. That’s the wild animal in you, feeding. This is how you will evolve new systems of meaning, new combinations and unexpected unions.
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Shout out to OG homie, Ty Nathan Clark, and Nathan Terborg for the launch of their new podcast, Just Make Art. Each episode they choose a quote from a known artist and use it as a springboard for discussion. Can you dig it?
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And congrats to my client, Jerry Colonna, on the release of his new book Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong. This book is timely and necessary and sure to ruffle feathers in the best way possible. If you lead people I hope you check it out.
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Jump + Pray,
Joce
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