Thinking With Things - Chapter 6

This is an excerpt from Peter Korn’s book - Why We Make and Why it Matters.

He is writing from a writing desk that he made decades prior.

As he reflects on this, he shares that though his stated goal was “to create furniture that manifested simplicity, integrity, and grace. As I have come to understand it since, however, my underlying brief was actually to arrive at a vision of how life could and should be lived.”

I love that.

He continues:

There were three critical aspects to this effort: Discovery, Embodiment, and Communication. They seem to define the essential structure of all forms of creative practice. Discovery is the process of coming up with new ideas and implementing them, decision by decision. Embodiment is the way in which the constructed desk cast my decisions in concrete - became what the painter Chuck Close referred to as the frozen detritus of the artist’s experience. Communication is what happens happens when the desk registers on the consciousness of a respondent.”

I love that last part.

Communication is what happens happens when the desk registers on the consciousness of a respondent.

I like that part because it reminds me that communication is the result of a connection between the artist and the audience via the physical expression of the work as medium.