Thursday, February 11, 2010

Day Thirty Seven

If you'll remember, back around Day Fifteen or so, I went with Judy Davis and Mary Catherine Floyd to Coro Lake Elementary and taught the 4th, 5th and 6th grade classes how to make patterns for cast aluminum tiles. In the last few days, Jeannie Tomlinson Saltmarsh and I have been ramming them up (making molds from oil sand) and casting them. Here are some of the result of our labor. Only 100 more tiles to go.
This project is designed as supplementary arts learning in public schools. I am hoping to revamp SmartShop's Foundry program and take this project to our public schools, with the designs for the patterns being inspired by and based on the scientific concepts that the students are studying. Cool huh? Best part? This is all 100% recycled Aluminum. Next best part? The tiles will be assembled into a 3 dimensional quilt and installed permanently at the school. Wow!

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Rilke said...

Do continue to believe that with your feeling and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate in yourself this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it.

Works of Art are of an infinite loneliness.

Fame is the sum of the misunderstanding that gathers about a new name.

Nothing in the world can one imagine beforehand, not the least thing. Everything is made up of so many unique particulars that cannot be foreseen.

Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more. And we also once. Never again.

Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown.

That is the principal thing: not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being in the mood, but always forcibly to convert it into all things.

Flow (psychology)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.^[1]

According to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task.^[2]

Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be on the ball, in the zone, in the groove, or keeping your head in the game.