Marc Ecko from Giant Magazine

On his mistakes…

“The biggest mistake a lot of young entrepreneurs make is hiring people they care about emotionally.”

On how to stay relevant…

“The biggest trap for creative types is the moment they start becoming introspective it paralyzes them. You can’t operate from a position of fear of irrelevance. You have to operate from a position of strength and confidence.”

On his greatest success…

“You also can’t tolerate self-loathing artists who do things purely for the sake of art and are too afreaid to commercialize.”

On his work ethic…

“There’s the illusion of me doing this alone, but it’s all due to the chemistry I have with people behind the scenes.”

And a bit of advice…

“You have to aspire becasue you want to change something.”

Frank Robinson on Art

Frank Robinson is the director of the Johnson Museum of art at Cornell University, and recently when asked by Beth Saulnier “What is art?” he replied

…Art is about everything – love, hatred, sex, envy , generosity. It’s about God, about the lack of God. As you live, things just flow by; at the end of the day you’ve had 1000 experiences and not really appreciated any one of them. An artist stops and makes you appreciate life disappearing.

This was excerpted from the May / June issue of Cornell University Alumni Magazine.

Carl Sagan Lectures Published

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A personal view of the Search for God

There was some excerpts published in the Cornell University Alumni Magazine that I found particularly poignant.

In regard to the growth of huge empires out of hunter gatherer groups…I think we’re getting really close especially with the ideas of social networking sites like Facebook…

As time passed, groups have merged, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily, and the unit to which personal identification and loyalties are due has grown. The sequence is known to all of those who take courses in history of civilization at universities, in which we pass through allegiances to larger groups, to city-states, to settled nations, to empires. Today the typical person on the Earth is obviously a patchwork quilt of political, economic, ethnic, and religious identifications, owing allegiance to a group or groups consisting of a hundred million people or more. It’s clear that there is a steady trend; if the trend continues, there will be a time, probably not so far in the future, where the average person’s typical identification is within the human species, with everyone on Earth.

On religion…

We have Ten Commandments in the West. Why is there now commandment exhorting us to learn? “Thou shalt understand the world. Figure things out.” There’s nothing like that. And very few religions urge us to enhance our understanding of the natural world. I think it is striking how poorly religions, by and large, have accommodated to the astonishing truths that have emerged in the last few centuries.

I think regarding the aforementioned it’s interesting to note how the comprehension of the earth and our relation to it has been examined by David Abram in The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World…he makes the point that understanding is spiritual *and* scientific, overall it’s about being aware.

Ellsworth Kelly and Christian Marclay at SFMOMA

When I first came out to San Francisco in March of 2002, I went to the SF Moma to see Eva Hesse’s retrospective then later I was out to apartment hunt, I returned in June of 2002, and saw Sampling by Christian Marclay and Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco. I distinctly remember being really psyched that there was ‘sound art’ because I had just finished doing my “Priorities” installation for my thesis show at Cornell University. Plus I <3 Ellsworth Kelly's paintings.

Recent Trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art

I went to see the “Japanese Masters of the Brush” show and was so impressed with the sheer volume of the work. So many ink paintings, and the mounting was as integral to the pieces as the composition.

Ike Tiaga and Tokuyama Gyokuran create work with traditional themes interpreted in their own style, and I have to say I left the show inspired and refreshed.

Thomas Chimes a local Philadelphia artist had a collection of work on display titled “Adventures in ‘Pataphysics” where visitors had the opportunity to see the breadth of his artistic practice. Pop icons in metal collages, and expertly rendered paintings on panel shared the same gallery space. I share the fascination with representations of clean technology and organic ideals in his metal boxes.