a way in

"Ugly-messy-beautiful.  That brings to mind the Japanese idea of wabi-sabi. 
Which I feel is in a kindred spirit with the artwork I do... I like to SEE the process in the finished work. The best thing I ever saw (well, one of) was Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures...

 There one could see, frozen in time, the raw act of chipping these figures from the rock. 

How much more interesting that is than a polished image with no “way in” for the viewer!"

–David Ezra Stein in this great interview/conversation 

with Matthew Cordell on Number Five Bus

And a few new pieces from the past few weeks...

not afraid of falling

"Left to their own devices, most people don't want to fail.  
But Andrew Stanton [is] ...known around Pixar for... the phrase 'be wrong as fast as you can.' 
He thinks of failure like learning to ride a bike; 
it isn't conceivable that you would learn to do this without making mistakes— 
without toppling over a few times.  'Get a bike that's as low to the ground as you can find, 
put on elbow and knee pads so you're not afraid of falling, and go,' he says. 

Even though people in our offices have heard Andrew say this repeatedly many still miss the point.
They think it means accept failure with dignity and move on. 

The better, more subtle interpretation is that failure is a manifestation of learning 

and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: 

You are being driven by the desire to avoid it."

-Pixar Cofounder Ed Catmull from the book Creativity, Inc.