WORK WITH YOUR HANDS

We work with our hands. We manipulate physical tools, pen, paper and the like, as we craft knowledge of form. Our primary sensory input is visual. We craft our drawings in the analogue. Our drawings are man made. We are craftspeople.

In the West, craftspeople who work with their hands have lower cultural value than intellectuals who work purely in symbols.

The useful arts have been, since the Greeks, carried on by slaves and base mechanics and shared in generally low cultural esteem. This included architects, sculptors, painters, musicians, etc. The common element is that all of these worked with their hands and employed physical materials. To the Greeks, the loftiest calling was those who worked in words, as they were not manipulating anything physical. (1) p341.

Yet,as Sennett tells us,

“..all skills, even the most abstract, begin as bodily practices; second, that technical understanding develops through the powers of imagination” (2) p10.

We are rooted in our physicality. Humans engage, fully and physically, with our environment. We see with our entire physical beings. We are a part of Universe, not separate from it. Our eyes are mere vessels which are part of our sensory apparatus. Any act of craft, of working with your hands, augments our knowledge, which is body wide. An act of craft provides increased integration of our physicality with our environment.

“We talk far too much. We should talk less and draw more. I personally should like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic Nature, communicate everything I have to say in sketches.” Goethe. (3). p73.

Revel in the craft.
-The phenomenon of making marks with a tool on a piece of paper is physical, and is an inviolate bedrock of knowledge.
-The physicality of applying a watercolor tone over another happens in real time.
-The ink wash will be disrupted in unexpected ways by the lines from the pastel pencil.
-Our craft engages and therefore modifies our imagination.
Work with your hands.

1. Dewey, John. Art as Experience. Capricorn Books. New York. 1934.
2. Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press, New Haven. 2008.
3. Huxley, Aldus. The Doors of Perception. Harper & Row; New York. 1954.