Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.-- R. Buckminster Fuller
Apprentice is the beginner - the first years you work in a craft in the European sense you are an apprentice. That takes 3 or 4 years. Then you are a journeyman. You can go from one master to another and learn other tricks and other secrets.
The story of Black Mountain College begins in 1933 and comprises a fascinating chapter in the history of education and the arts. Conceived by John A. Rice, a brilliant and mercurial scholar who left Rollins College in a storm of controversy, Black Mountain College was born out of a desire to create a new type of college based on John Dewey’s principles of progressive education. The events that precipitated the College’s founding occurred simultaneously with the rise of Adolf Hitler, the closing of the Bauhaus by the Nazis, and the beginning of the persecution of artists and intellectuals on the European continent. Some of these people found their way to Black Mountain, either as students or faculty. Meanwhile, the United States was mired in the Great Depression, and Franklin Roosevelt, committed to putting people back to work, established the Public Works Arts Project (a precursor of the WPA).
The founders of the College believed that the study and practice of art were indispensable aspects of a student’s general liberal arts education, and they hired Josef Albers to be the first art teacher. Speaking not a word of English, he and his wife Anni left the turmoil in Hitler’s Germany and crossed the Atlantic Ocean by boat to teach art at this small, rebellious college in the mountains of North Carolina.
Black Mountain College was fundamentally different from other colleges and universities of the time. It was owned and operated by the faculty and was committed to democratic governance and to the idea that the arts are central to the experience of learning. All members of the College community participated in its operation, including farm work, construction projects and kitchen duty. Located in the midst of the beautiful North Carolina mountains near Asheville, the secluded environment fostered a strong sense of individuality and creative intensity within the small College community.
Legendary even in its own time, Black Mountain College attracted and created maverick spirits, some of whom went on to become well-known and extremely influential individuals in the latter half of the 20th century. A partial list includes people such as Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Vera B. Williams, Ben Shahn, Franz Kline, Arthur Penn, Buckminster Fuller, M.C. Richards, Francine du Plessix Gray, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Dorothea Rockburne and many others, famous and not-so-famous, who have impacted the world in a significant way. Even now, decades after its closing in 1957, the powerful influence of Black Mountain College continues to reverberate
When they leave,
Do you think they hesitate,
Turn and make a farewell sign,Some gesture of regret?
When they leave,
the music is loudest,
the sun high,
and you, dizzy with wine
befuddled with well-being,
sink into your body
as though it were real,
as if yours to keep.
You neither see their going,
nor hear their silence
“The optimal way for getting super-regenerating skin would be to allow our foot to interact with natural surfaces outside of the shoe over a lifetime, prompting a slow adaptation in foot skin thickness over that lifetime, giving us a much better ability to cope with the sensations caused by walking barefoot.”– Katy Bowman, Every Woman’s Guide to Foot Pain Relief.
"Movements are not programs. They are intent, followed by constant adaptation to variables. The more control a person has over their individual articulations, the more degrees of freedom = better adaptability."
"Janet Echelman creates experiential sculpture at the scale of buildings that transform with wind and light. The art shifts from being an object you look at, to a living environment you can get lost in. Using unlikely materials from fishnet to atomized water particles, Echelman combines ancient craft with cutting-edge technology to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on four continents."
"You adapt to your conditions and your conditions include your characteristics as well as the characteristics around you...As a human who is blind I have adapted to my blindness by finding a different way to see in a world that isn't really conducive to not seeing."-- Daniel Kish
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
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