The Icarus Session in Austin February 6, 2013

I love Seth Godin and his blog.  He has suggested that people all over the world participate in what he is calling Icarus Sessions, where people are allowed to share about their art.  The idea is to encourage each other to get art “out there.”  Stacy and I attended the Austin session last night, the 6th of February.  We thoroughly enjoyed the session.

Here is what I read and some photos I shared.

My name is Michael and I capture beauty with my camera.  Beautiful things are all around us and we often fail to even notice them.  I say I capture them, because they are fleeting, momentary and often gone forever.  But then most beauty is like that isn’t it?  Photography captures those moments in time and space.  Stopping, pausing, capturing light is a way to keep that beauty alive.

I believe in all cultures there is a longing and a desire to produce beautiful things, to make beauty not only last, but make it part of everyday life.  I also believe there is a universal longing for aesthetic completeness.  By that I mean there is an impulse within to find wholeness and meaning, by recreating beauty, then living within that creation.  It may be a sacred or profane place, an altar to a deity or stark rock formation, but the beauty is there, there whether or not anyone ever beholds it.

All artists seek to contribute to that completeness.  Whether it is with paintbrush, pen or pixels, describing, capturing, laying out that beauty is a task we share.  We do not create, but re-create the beauty.  We contribute to the completeness through forms: abstract, concrete, realistic, farcical, erotic, or philosophical; but form is only that: a form which is here today and gone tomorrow.  It is not the method of art that needs to be discussed, but the meaning of the beauty recreated and shared.

My name is Michael and I capture beauty: light and dark, colors, textures, forms and fantasies but all I do is try find that completeness and make beauty real.