Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with lacquer mixed with gold. The repair doesn’t hide the damage – it accentuates the fractures and makes them a focal point, creating a more interesting and potentially more valuable object than the original. Part of the aesthetic of kintsugi is to acknowledge the damage and…
An act of creation is not just about making something new, something that never existed before. It’s also about the impact that the created object has on its surroundings. Think about public sculpture that is placed on a highway median simply because the space is available and the city council believes that art will “class…
In this fictionalized account of a real two-week motorcycle trip that Robert Pirsig took with his son Christopher and two friends, Pirsig explores a number of philosophical themes through informal observations that he calls “Chautauquas.” At the start of the story Pirsig sets up a conflict between two mindsets, the Romantic and the Classical. The…
In Zen Buddhsim there is an idea of “just sitting”. One is not trying to attain enlightenment or achieve any goal other than sitting. One aspires to sit completely. Robert Pirsig makes an connection with motorcycle repair, that it can be “just fixing.” One is completely absorbed in the work of repair, to the point…
