Chosen Lineages
This past week I have been thinking about all the things that have made me who I am. All the influences, the choices, the people that have somehow amalgamated into the man that is sitting here in front of this computer. This of course brings up the inescapable influences of family, but because of an article I read this week about Philip Glass, the composer, I am also thinking about the influences that I have chosen.
“I sometimes hear about work described in terms of ‘originality’ or ‘breakthrough’, but my personal experience is quite different. For me, music has always been about lineage. The past is reinvented and becomes the future. But lineage is everything...
I’m more and more coming to the idea that it’s the lineage and the connection to the past and the connection to the future —- that is the real connection... The important thing is how [you are] connected to the past. Does that represent not only continuity, but does it bring us closer to something that’s richer, that’s more interesting?”
Influences have made their way into my life through books, articles, classes, and of course the internet. This distinction between given and chosen influences, or "lineages" as Philip Glass calls them, is an interesting idea.
Can you name those people that you chose to influence you significantly?
Who have you emulated?
Who have you stolen or borrowed from?
Who's work can you trace your own work back to?
If you can name these people, let’s be thankful for them this week, it is Thanksgiving after all. The fact that somehow, somewhere we stumbled across them and their work and this encounter in some small or enormous way has changed us deserves acknowledgement.
I decided to share a few of my personal influences and heros. The more I thought about my own chosen lineages, the more I realized that I had an array across all aspects of my life. Creatively, philosophically, physically, spiritually. But for the sake of this article, this is only a small list of my creative influences. These are the easy ones, the ones I thought might be most widely shared and known.
I am also terribly interested in hearing who your people are too. So please, if you are so inclined and have the time, share with me you're chosen lineage. Who knows, maybe your people will become my people too.
“We can turn our temporal attention upstream rather than downstream—- toward what preceded Tolkien or Austen or whomever rather than what succeeded them. After all, Austen became the Austen we know largely through her reading—- something that is true of almost all writers... If you imitate them in that sense—- not by trying to write what they wrote but by trying to read what they read—- you’ll find your horizons expanding, your mind stretching, your resources of knowledge coming near their limits...”
Tom Kundig
Tom Kundig is a well known American architect who's work is distinguished by an acute sensitivity to place, context, and materials. Of course he would be someone who would speak to me; these are all my buttons, how could he not. Because his work is so well documented I can live somewhat vicariously through it. I am sure he is not new to many of you, but he is definitely part of our creative lineage.
Peter Zumthor
Peter Zumthor is a Pritzker Architecture Prize winner from Switzerland. Again his conversation with place and materials speak to me. His voice is softer and lighter in many ways than Kundig's, but approaches sublime. Where I live a bit through Kundig's work I am awed by Zumthor's. His use of materials are solid and concrete, but it all hints to something more, something hidden. I like the mystery.
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American sculptor, who again, maintains an honesty and respect toward his material. I knew I had a love of materials, materials of all kinds, but as I write this, I am beginning to feel a bit trite and repetitive. Though similar ideas of materiality relate to each of these, they each inform me in very distinct ways.
Carby Tuckwell
Carby Tuckwell is the creative director and co-founder of Deus Ex Machina. He is a graphic guy, unlike the others on this list. I admire and am envious of his loose carefree style. This is a guy I do try to emulate and copy sometimes but it always just comes off like a cheap imitation. I wish it didn't, but it does.
Stuart Cairns
Stuart Cairns is a sculptor/jewelry maker. His use of mixed materials (there it is again, I am starting to feel like that word is dirty) is fantastic. He uses precious metals alongside found trash like broken toothbrushes, netting, glass, spoons, etc. In doing this, he creates moments of incredible dialog between the materials, speaking of value, responsibility, and beauty. His chosen medium is not always innately beautiful, but his use is. This is something I also aspire to do.