brettworks

(Photo: NASA/Preston Dyches)

Influence is everywhere and diffuse, but we know people whose work and life we turn to for concentrated inspiration, sympathetic vibration, and to re-orient ourselves on our own adventure. These people are our artistic North Stars. They’re our teachers, contemporaries, or figures distant in time and place who inspire us with how they’ve integrated artistic practice into their life and their life into their practice. What do we notice? Commit, explore, share. North Stars commit to a sphere of aesthetic action, explore it by evolving ever new ways of practice, and then share their discoveries. In sum, inspiration is everywhere, often in non-obvious places. An artist may not be famous, critically lauded, virtuosic, or visionary, yet we find their work exciting. Exciting is that which vibrates in a way that compels you to pay attention, to move along with its movement. Artistic North Stars’ horizon of influence is wide vibration: you never know how what you do is resonating with someone else.