Thinking like an Artist: Translating Ideas into Form

As a child I wasn’t preoccupied with calling myself an artist or what art materials were and were not. I explored with the curiosity of a scientist and the boldness of youth. I would carve designs into my father’s Beethoven record collection, seeing the needle of his turntable as my drawing tool and the vinyl as my canvas. I painted bold patterns on our walls, expanding my drawings into the world around me. I look back on these moments as an essential time where I learned how to explore and to be comfortable following my intuition. I’m sure my father is relieved that I moved on from destroying his property, but those fundamental lessons remain with me. The difficulty of retaining an open and alert outlook toward the world into adulthood makes the role of the artist a uniquely important one. Creators are society’s bastions of empathy and instigators of new perspectives. Sight is our most important sense; <a href="https://stories.moma.org/thinking-like-an-artist-translating-ideas-into-form-1ebed5bbd45">Learn More</a>