Reading Hall, I've been thinking alot about time and space--how we create physical symbols/parameters for each that truly are of our own making. How is that a little black box beside my bed "tells" me "what" time it is in the morning? How is it a recipe tells us 350 degrees for 35 minutes--and we watch numbers count backwards to tell us when the pie is done. Is time-keeping a way of counting? I gave up my watch two summers ago for another MALS class. How incredibly liberating to remove time from your body.... But it's not time, is it? It's the symbol of time--they are not the same.

I have a hard time every year with "daylight savings time." Now isn't that just a bizarre statement? What exactly is it we're "saving"? Are we saving daylight or are we saving time? And are we really "saving" it? Is it saving as in "set it aside for later use" or saving it from being used or saving it from being taken?

Space is another realm to be explored. My next door neighbor and I both hire people to mow our lawns. As our driveways are on opposite side of the house, our lawns are adjacent. His person comes every Wednesday, mine every 10 or so days. Rarely does the mowing meet. So invariably, there is a nice line down the middle of the green expanse marking the measured parameter of our spaces. What would happen if either one of our guys went wide or short 2 feet? We wouldn't know what to do! Each time the line is made we reaffirm the boundary. The grass doesn't care "whose side" its on--that's our doing...

My daughter is ADHD. Her mind works incredibly fast, it's just amazing. I've always be fascinated with how she arranges things--she used to sort things by the size of the container rather than by the object's function. A small square drawer required a small square object; a larger drawer required larger objects. So a stack of small drawers may have the same thing in every drawer rather than all pennies in one, rubber bands in another, etc. She does not modify the number of objects, but modifies the arrangement to "make" spaces--really fascinating.

Art making is where I am most conscious of the illusions of time and space. When I am painting I am in another dimension--the clock on the wall and even the room that I am in all fade away. It's an odd feeling. It's almost as if I leave behind my everyday life and enter the painting itself--I am literally painting my world into being. There's a word for the time--chronos, or "God time"; I don't know the name for the space. Does there have to be one for it to be real?

Images of childhood...When the images of babies began, I immediately went to my own kids--back a million years ago when they were small. I love wide-open kids. Kids who are amazed at being here on planet earth and haven't been pushed into place yet. The one image of a young girl who was maybe 9 or 10 then made me jump to myself. Still a child, but the outer edges are starting to shift into personhood. It's kind of sad growing up...

what makes me laugh? I love the scene in Jim Carrey's "God Almighty" when he messes with the news anchor's delivery of the newscast--tears rolled down my face on that one. My outrageous 2 year old niece who stares her grandmother in the eye, my 15 year old daughter's girl silliness put forth with a grin, when my 20 year old son sings "you can ring my bell" with a dead straight face. Laughter is core connection of the very best kind.

I am so glad to have read Dissanayake's book, "What is Art For?" One of the ongoing challenges to working in the arts is the pressure to defend your occupation. Are other occupations like this? I've always wondered if athletes had to justify their chosen field as well. My guess is no, and yet sports operate outside of the "survival" list as much as the arts.

While I know the arts operate at the core level of what it is to be human, I did not have the words to describe the necessity of the arts to others. There are many in the arts who do the same thing. We are challenged to find data that justifies our work--how does one collect data on impacting another's soul?

But now when asked "How can you justify spending (public or private) funds on something like art when there are real social issues to be addressed?" I can respond: "because it addresses the very primal and very real social need to be human."

I ran into Marsha at Target on Sunday, the day before the class officially launched. When I asked about how the process (of creating the course and getting it on-line) was going, you should have seen her face light up! "It's done!" she said with a big grin. She's done the journey on the course and had a great time--now it's our turn!

Ok, onto the questions:

Is art a universal language? I think yes and no. Art is both process and product. I think the desire to make art and the act of making art (the process) are universal, but the outcome is not and that cultural norms play a huge role in how we understand what is being communicated. For example, Nazi Germany understood itself to be superior to other races. If a German artist of the 1930's produced a work referencing a strong sense of self, I don't know how much I could separate the work from the culture. Art is very much a product of the time and place it is made.

So yes, I think translation is sometimes neccessary. The globally shared human experiences of joy, anger, defiance, defeat, love, sadness, fear--all these are shared, and all are communicated. But I wouldn't always know they are being communicated.

Great questions to get us started. I guess that's a good mark--if the questions don't have straight answers. And art is the most perfect arena to explore it. (Ok, I'm prejudiced toward art...)