An Indian rhinoceros named Clara
I saw a documentary tonight featuring Mark Leonard, a conservator/restorer at the Getty. Do you know of Oudry, a French painter with 11 portraits of animals?
http://www.getty.edu/museum/conservation/partnerships/oudry/
Leonard said how the job of the restorer is, when people see a picture that arrives with tears or rips or patches of color missing, they say, “Will you be able to fix that?” And when he is done, if he has done good work, people say, “Look at that picture!” and discuss its art and engage with it. As Leonard says, they now see the picture and not the damage.
This got me thinking about my own work and how it’s similar to what a restorer does. People might first focus on their or others’ damage or differences, or the damage in their relationship, and I get them to focus on their and others’ art and engage. It’s still the same picture, but now they see the picture and not the differences. And because they’re people and not pictures, they continue this work of seeing, of engaging, in their own ways.
Today we were driving in the car to the beach, to make a kite. We’d gotten supplies now were driving to the beach but M– was having a minor feud with L–. M– asked me, what do I do with teams when people want different things and can’t agree. So I suggested two things: start making something together / start playing together, and sometimes people can go separate ways for awhile. It depends what the goal is. So if it’s a car ride and someone wants to listen to music and someone wants to read, it’s possible to do both at once. And I mentioned a third thing, of understanding core beliefs and values and then finding ways everyone together can have their core beliefs and values. So if someone wants organized chaos and someone wants to send greeting cards to people you don’t normally send greeting cards to, we can have both. Such as make greeting cards and then make the envelopes for the greeting cards a little too small — that’s the organized chaos.
Anyway, we got to the beach and made the kite and it was very satisfying how we were all involved in physically tying the fishing line, taping, and holding down the paper from blowing away. Then we went separate but adjacent ways for awhile (playing basketball and swimming in the ocean, ordering different foods and drinks) which actually provided the platform to understand and question our different core beliefs and values. The goal? Nothing specific, but we had fun, got to know one another a lot better, and bonded, if not as friends with everyone, then each of us became a lot closer to at least some of us, and certainly at least a little closer to all of us, and we laughed a lot.
Anyway, we got to the beach and made the kite and it was very satisfying how we were all involved in physically tying the fishing line, taping, and holding down the paper from blowing away. Then we went separate but adjacent ways for awhile (playing basketball and swimming in the ocean, ordering different foods and drinks) which actually provided the platform to understand and question our different core beliefs and values. The goal? Nothing specific, but we had fun, got to know one another a lot better, and bonded, if not as friends with everyone, then each of us became a lot closer to at least some of us, and certainly at least a little closer to all of us, and we laughed a lot.
Love,
Alex
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