View Large "The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other. The proliferation of one-way messages, whether in print or on the air, seems to have increased rather than to have lessened the alienation of the individual. Friendly, gregarious America is full of insanely lonely people." - By Marya Mannes, born in 1904 to a family of important musicians, novelist & playwright, published in Theatre Arts, Creative Art, International Studio, Vogue (where she was an editor), The Reporter & The New Yorker, & noted for cultural sensitivity & hard on point, no-nonsense criticism. She died in 1990. The quotation reminds me that art is the necessary milk of both self & community. Without it, one becomes a replica, an automaton, of which the social concomitant is increasing demand for law & order, the drafting of more & more men & women to enforce it, & acceleration toward tyranny, social divisiveness & war. If one's imagination is purposely shaped to find its own best muses, then one's self not only creates, but also cannot be without, a greater degree of independence of spirit & mind than is otherwise possible. This sort of independence enables diversity among persons to be their playground, not the front line of their battlefield. The performance depicted was in an elementary school. The dozens of children were seated on a gymnasium floor, spontaneously interacting with the dancers they were observing - squirming, bouncing, waving, leaping, shouting, screaming ... not at all treating the drama before their ears & eyes as though it were a mere one-way message. When I was young & went off to college, one of the first things learned was that there is such a thing as an Esthetic Experience, & that the more such experiences one gets the better life is probably going to be. One's capacity for such Experiences is inborn, &, if not corrupted (as it quite cruelly & often is), is also able by participation & education to be nurtured, expanded & intensified. The Experience is made of informed interaction with an art object or performance - in, for instance, while reading a novel, simultaneously joining the action & the actors; or, when looking at a painting, conversing with the picture about what is seen & what seeing it is awakening, arousing & contributing to the creation of thoughts, images, feelings & anything else in oneself. To perceive art is to squirm, bounce, & shout or talk back at it, Freely. Just talking about it, & not with & at it, is not enough. If one has not been made by ideologically domineering teachers or cultural institutions & shibboleths to see only what such controlling forces say it is proper to see, then what can happen, marvelously, is The Uncommon, The Unexpected, The Forbidden ... that is, all that nourishes Invention, which is Self. RD ? PERFORMERS L. to R. • Kaia Gilje, Angela Kiser, Kai Berkedal, Katelyn Hales & Ella Mahler LOCATION • "Dance Makers" at Happy Valley Elementary School, Fairhaven District, Bellingham, Washington

We're out of the Communications Design MA into the land of Jewellery and Textiles so it gets prissy about photography. I can see why though, someone could easily mistake my amateur photo of a wonderful piece of student gold jewellery for the real thing. Doh! Or perhaps someone will see my photo and steal the student's ideas by taking them into mass production, though I'd have thought such people would go to the show anyway, and maybe employ the student. But what if they missed the show? Surely generating a buzz online by reporting on the show, albeit in an amateur blog/flickr way will just be great for the students. Pah!