Kay and I went to Walpi, maybe the oldest continuous inhabited village on the continent... Near a stole altar lives an ancient great-grandmother, over a hundred years old, some say. She asked us to come in. Her hands are arthritic but she is a working potter. She not only throws the pots, but paints them afterward. I asked her how she manages to do it, since her knuckles are knotted by arthritis and she is nearly blind with cataracts.
She said, "It's not my hands that make the pot, it's my spirit. My hands are broken by my potteries hold my soul, and that's whole."
~ from THE THEFT OF THE SPIRIT by Carl A. Hammerschlag
If artistic creations emerge from our lives and the ways in which we see the world, then it seems useful to engage the workplace as a source of creative subject matter and energy. The job is the place where most of us spend time and expend effort each day. It is the world we inhabit, and I believe we can make it better and more satisfying through the conscious use of the creative process. . . . Our creations and our lives are enhanced when we realize that everything in our environment is a source for imagination.
~ from “The Practice of Creativity in the Workplace” by Shaun McNiff, in THE SOUL OF CREATIVITY, ed. by Tona P. Myers
