This post introduces a miniseries on four values which remain integral to my creative work: love, humility, faith and wisdom.
I will be delving into how each value transforms my practice, but also how they balance each other out to provide a good foundation for others to learn from.
A lot of people talk about how values are your unique flavour to what you’re bringing to the table. But I prefer to think of them as guardrails which help me to stay on track. They provide a focus and an impetus when things are tough and they help problem solving processes. I arrived at these values nearly three years ago during some careers coaching I received and I have returned to them ever since. I don’t take on any projects which don’t have any discernible resemblance of these qualities and they are what I strive for in every working relationship.
As much as we artists often veer away from clinging to moral absolutes, we’re deeply moral people. Perhaps the word ‘moral’ feels a bit too jarring. We might taper it by saying we have conviction or settle for ‘value-based’. But the truth is no one is out there creating persuasive art simply for arts sake. However subtle or imperceptible, there is always a moral note to be struck. It’s what keeps us going.
Values are a way to keep us drawing from the deep pure waters of our moral core which lie dormant in our day to day, but flare up when we’re hit with something not right in the world.
Talking about the arts ecosystem in New York, visual artist Makoto Fujimura puts it like this:
“It is widely recognized that our culture today is not life giving. There is little room at the margins to make artistic endeavors sustainable. The wider ecosystem of art and culture has been decimated, leaving only homogenous pockets of survivors, those fit enough to survive in a poisoned environment. In culture as in nature, a lack of diversity is a first sign of a distressed ecosystem.
Many of the streams that feed the river of culture are polluted, and the soil this river should be watering is thus parched and fragmented.”1
Values help us stay hydrated in our sometimes suffocating environments.
Stay tuned for what’s next:
Love
Humility
Faith
Wisdom
Makoto Fujimura, Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for our Common Life, (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2017), p. 30.