OK, enough nonsense. Baseball season is over and it's time to get back to business writing about art. When I first started this blog it was to write about my art, and document a move to a new home and studio. With that pretty much done, there seemed less to say about my work, but enough to say about art all around us, and while I continue to write about what I do, and occasionally post new images of current projects, more and more I notice the art of everyday things.

Last week I bought an accessory for my iPhone, and once again experienced the beauty of Apple products. Is it art? I believe so because I believe one of the defining factors of art is the thought behind the piece, whether it be a bluetooth headset, a beautiful painting, or a great athletic performance. Nothing artistic happens spontaneously, it requires extensive thought and preparation, and where Apple is concerned, the beauty encompasses everything including the packaging and even disclosures. Joel Spolsky writes about Apple's design prowess and aptly sums up what makes Apple Apple.

Beyond everyday devices, the phones and jackets and shoes, there are examples of art in everything both useful and aesthetic. The things that are art are the things that are extensions of their creators. A beautiful building is art if it contains the heart and soul of an architect, which, as I sit here looking out over the skyscrape of downtown Portland, describes few buildings indeed. And while we can use a standard formula or process, things like the golden ratio et al to create items of accurate proportion or scale, they are merely superficial without the volume of thought and skill of an artist's mind and hand.

Does that mean everything beautiful is art? No. Of course not. Art is an inherent, undefinable quality of an object which can only be described like pornography. I can't explain it, but I know it when I see it. Or hear it, for that matter, for there is plenty of music that qualifies as art. But let's leave the definitions to others and simply open our eyes, which is what this blog has become about. The art of everything, all things around us, all activities and sounds, have the potential to present us with art, however common.

Think about it next time you watch some dull program on PBS or Discovery, or wherever they show them, when they show film of an ancient civilization and fawn over the daily objects unearthed from their buried villages. These are pots, and plates, and utensils, everyday household goods that are now invaluable, not so much because they are art, but because there are so few of them they wind up in art museums as examples of culture itself. Do things today have the potential to hold such value? Wait 5,000 years and see. If they do, I'd rather enjoy it now, before it's distilled into an unrecycled and empty Talking Rain bottle behind the glass of some future civilizations cultural museum.

In the meantime, let's explore the art of everything together. Let the unusual, and overlooked art of our world be documented and recognized in and of it's time, before they become relics or commonly obsolete. And, by the way, the last several months worth of drawings are finally being scanned....for anyone who may have wondered what happened to the art on this site.