JOHN SMALLEY
artist / teacher
writings
“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
“Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
The texts which follow represent a range of approaches to the written word and address a variety of subjects. There are straightforward essays and meditations, short appreciations of artists and writers and their works, fragments from diaries and journals, experiments with combining image and text, projects, ideas, and assignments from my teaching archive, and LISTS. Lists of quotations, books, links, etc., things which might prove helpful to fellow artists and teachers of Art. All of this, I hope and intend to give both “freely and abundantly.”