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“the abdication of possibilities can furnish us with equanimity just as it can furnish us with art.”

“good author of good utopias,” writes Reinhart Kosselleck, “evidently has very little desire to be a utopian.”

“That the more distinct, sharp, and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling.” (AN)

The great and golden rule of art, as well as of life, is this: That the more distinct, sharp, and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling…. What is it that builds a house and plants a garden, but the definite and determinate? What is it that distinguishes honesty from knavery, but the hard and wirey line of rectitude and certainty in the actions and intentions. Leave out this line and you leave out life itself; all is chaos again, and the line of the almighty must be drawn out upon it before man and beast can exist.

William Blake

Untitled (Field Guide–exposure to enchanted forms; a kamal and Polaris creating possibility), 2023. Graphite, gouache, cut vinyl, enamel paint, colored pencil, and collage on a Xerox Versant 80 print on Mohawk Superfine paper. 18.25 x 12 inches.

A “kamal is one of the earliest navigational tools that used measuring altitude to determine latitude. The word kamal means “guide” in Arabic. […] Essentially, a kamal is a flat piece of wood with a string attached to the middle. The kamal uses the position of Polaris (the North Star) in the sky to help a sailor determine his latitude.”

The North Star, newspaper founded and edited by Frederick Douglass.

“…that the man who has suffered the wrong is the man to demand redress,—that the man STRUCK is the man to CRY OUT—and that he who has endured the cruel pangs of Slavery is the man to advocate Liberty.”

“The stars are pinned between the leaves
of the trees, and love is only a harbinger,
…
signposts pointing the way
in and out

Cynthia Zarin, Field Guide

The Point of Precision by Kathleen Stewart, 2016. This essay proposes a kind of critique aimed at approaching the improvisatory conceptuality of ordinary forms emergent in everyday life. Using a slowed ethnographic attention to the immanent aesthetics of objects, it argues that the singularities through which forms take place animate both event and perception.