{"id":227,"date":"2009-06-20T15:03:24","date_gmt":"2009-06-20T22:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/?p=227"},"modified":"2012-09-01T10:17:21","modified_gmt":"2012-09-01T17:17:21","slug":"the-necessity-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/06\/the-necessity-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"The Necessity of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

These days I make my living as an Artist and Teacher, which is strange given that all my training has been in science culminating in a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University<\/a>.\u00a0 It was during that time as a doctoral student that I became enamored with photography.\u00a0 I have always loved the outdoors, and quickly discovered the natural and wild areas of the San Francisco Bay Area when I arrived.\u00a0 My jaunts into the Santa Cruz Mountains were very threraputic\u00a0in combating the stress associated\u00a0with graduate study and work.\u00a0 One day though I picked up a camera out of the necessity to defend my good word against claims that I could not have possibly seen the new crescent moon when it first becomes visible.\u00a0 The camera was at first a scientific tool that I used to record natural phenomena, much like any other scientific instrument used in an experiment.\u00a0 However what happened after that was pivotal in my life.<\/p>\n

The light was transforming.\u00a0 It was alive and changed its mood constantly and it brought me along for the ride with it.<\/p>\n

\"Lagunitas<\/a>

Lagunitas Sunset<\/p><\/div>\n

I don’t have many photos from those early days any more but the above sunset was one that was hard to just toss away.\u00a0 It had a quality of light that was just mesmerizing.\u00a0 Light became my drug and I needed to chase after it often and capture it for my own edification.\u00a0 For six years as a graduate student I pursued the light.\u00a0 Capturing it as often as I could, wherever I happened to be.\u00a0 I was an observer, I was a learner, I was a scientist with a tool in my hand that captured light.\u00a0\u00a0Nearing the end of\u00a0graduate school I met my future wife, who was an Artist and taught art at a local private elementary school.\u00a0 It was exciting being around her when she worked.\u00a0 She put her soul into her paintings and it came through in her work, it was her.\u00a0\u00a0In six years\u00a0of trying\u00a0to share the excitement I found while out photographing the landscape, no one I knew shared my excitement until I met her.\u00a0 She actually pushed me to achieve better results and was genuinely interested in the light I was capturing.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to a time after graduate shcool, we are married now and things are different.\u00a0 My photos were now obstacles that my wife needed out of the way.\u00a0 Thousands of them, stored in boxes, were in her way as she moved through the house.\u00a0 She brought an ultimatum – “toss out all these boxes collecting dust or do some thing with them”!\u00a0 And that was the pivot that changed me from being a scientist concerned with observation into a artist concerned with expression.\u00a0 For nearly eight years I had been in observation mode internalizing the natural world.\u00a0 Capturing moments in time that caused my heart to flutter or that stole my breath away.\u00a0 For eight years Mother Earth was the balm of my aching soul.\u00a0 Now it was time to express to others what was arguably overflowing in my heart.<\/p>\n

I have read many definitions of art<\/a>.\u00a0 None seem to hit the very core of what art is or what an artist does.\u00a0 To me an artist is someone who expresses to others what is contained in his or her heart and art is that expression.\u00a0 It can be beautiful or ugly, joyous or sad, and constantly changing.\u00a0 By default the artist is a scientist because simply put a scientist is some one very skilled at observation.\u00a0 The scientist internalizes observations and formulates theories based on those observations.\u00a0 For the most part the scientist’s job stops there.\u00a0 The artist on the other hand is also a skilled observer and internalizes experiences as well.\u00a0 However the artist is also a skilled communicator and expresses what he or she has internalized through some medium, be it visual or otherwise.\u00a0 And while formal science is fairly young in the scope of time, the skills of observation and expression used by an artist is as old as humanity itself.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Hunt<\/p><\/div>\n

Humans have been expressing their experiences through some moving means for a very long time.\u00a0 Whether it is through pictures on a wall, or through the words of a story teller or author, or through rhythm and tones, the artist relates what is in his or her heart to others in moving ways.\u00a0 In some respects art is what completes us as human beings.\u00a0 It brings us together peacefully.\u00a0 It lightens our circumstances and allows us to escape, even if for only a short while, the rigors of life itself.\u00a0 It allows us to relate with our feelings and emotions – it makes us human.<\/p>\n

In the world\u00a0of today, where terror, oppression, tyranny, injustice, and greed dominate the public sphere it is even more important that we double, or even triple our efforts to include art in our lives.\u00a0 I am afraid for the generations that follow me that are devoid of art.\u00a0 How cold and lacking of compassion will they be?\u00a0 Disconnected from their emotions like soulless robots running on automatic or worse yet with the intent on set to kill!\u00a0\u00a0Art is not taught in schools anymore due to budget cuts.\u00a0 It is seen as extracurricular and placed on the wayside.\u00a0 If a young student has a special talent for expression it is not fostered in a meaningful way such that he or she might make an honest\u00a0living at it.\u00a0 It is truly a sad state of affairs.<\/p>\n

In times of financial turmoil it is art that gets amputated and left to rot first – it being seen as not necessary in life.\u00a0 However it is through art that we find respite from the worries and anxiety that comes from tribulations in life.\u00a0 Is it any wonder that hospitals and medical clinics are chock full of art on the walls?\u00a0 Illness brings our mortality center stage and nothing is more stressful and un-nerving than that.\u00a0 And yet through the art on those walls, a climate of peace and serenity can pervade the heart.\u00a0 Look at any piece of art you have in your own home, and observe how it makes you feel.\u00a0 No, art is not only\u00a0crucial now more than ever before – it is Necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These days I make my living as an Artist and Teacher, which is strange given that all my training has been in science culminating in a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.\u00a0 It was during that time as a doctoral student that I became enamored with photography.\u00a0 I have always loved the outdoors, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[143,146,58,49,144,147,145],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1622,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/1622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}