There are two reasons why this kind of playing is effective. First, it involves goal-setting and decision-making, and this up front rather than part way through. Second, it helps free up brainpower to problem-solve musical and technical concerns. If my goal is only to do something a certain number of times, I will naturally attempt to get through this quota as fast as possible. There are obvious problems with this. By surrendering to limitations of time, I give myself space to find unique solutions.

This morning I’m thinking about how this applies to the way I spend my work/design/reading/making time.

Check out the beautiful textures on my mom’s old baking sheets. I would love to use these in a design project some day.

I spotted these construction lights taken out of their normal context in downtown Minneapolis, MN.

These are some photos I took on a recent trip to Kansas City, MO. I’ve been discovering the truth (nicely articulated by Austin Kleon) that interest is often created by exclusion of content rather than inclusion. My goal with these photos is to demonstrate that.

I designed this poster for the Lirica Chamber Ensemble’s spring concert.

I made a new poster. It’s something of an experiment—an attempt to play with expectations.

I want to attempt to make a connection between three things:

Ambient Music

Three nights ago I was falling asleep to some ambient music by Geotic when I realized that the bulk of the music was near-nothingness, and the changes in sound became almost everything.

The Freeway

I’ve written before about traffic patterns. I find this phenomenon extremely interesting, which is one of the reasons why my morning commute is one of my favorite parts of the day. I always think about the stupidity of how closely we all follow each other at 55 mph. We do it because we’re mostly only aware of the slight give and take between our cars, that is, we’re only aware of the discrepancy or change in speed between our vehicle and those around us. Strangely enough, on the freeway many things seem at a near standstill.

Color Field Paintings

You can see where I’m going with this. One of my art professors in college made it clear to me that repetition makes things visually disappear. Think Rothko and one of my other favorites, Georg Guðni. To get lost in this kind of work is to be calmed by it and then, in my view, shocked by the irregularities. After a time of looking, we stop perceiving the overwhelming color—what it feels like to drive 55 mph—and pay attention to the change. There’s a priority shift that happens here. By far, what becomes important is the imperfection (in ambient music, the shifts in sound) and evidence of the creation process.

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Image above: one of my paintings from 2008. 60″ x 40″ , oil on canvas.

My identity design for Faith Covenant Church’s (Burnsville, MN) Wheelin’ for Water bike trip fundraiser.

music by Geotic, “Dirt (Lonely in Big Bear)”

Sometimes it’s good to organize and group things by criteria unrelated to the function of those things. Take for example these letters that I pulled out of the English alphabet, chosen because they are symmetrical in shape rather than how they sound.

Art often plays this role, viz., to group more than one (normally unrelated) thing together, asking the viewer to consider a possible connection.

Prints below.