Yes, I’m always saying, “Often we look but we don’t see…” I say it because I’ve learned it; I’ve learned how important it is in this life to really look, really see. It’s important personally, and it’s imperative if your life’s calling involves the communication arts. For everything you take in can be manifested in your work, and if you don’t truly take things in—make them a part of you—then your work will be shallow, shortsighted, superficial.

I try to see everything—from the small fissures in the road I’m riding my bike on to the anxiety in the eyes of a student who’s trying hard to hide it.

Riding the bike at midnight or 6 a.m. through Boston, I got to see ordinary sights in a different light: CHEESE—a sign on the side of a building… Boston Commonwealth Ave… Behind a restaurant in the north section… (arguably the best Italian food in the country is here)… COLD, a sign with stressed type in the vernacular of the environment… Ted Williams the greatest hitter of all time… numbers and color on a wall at fenway park… type on a pub… from 1868… in the subway…

Look at all of the things in your environment. As my friend designer Dana Arnett once suggested to me, “Record, remember, relish and relive.”

While in Boston, I also visited the Edward Hopper exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts…amazing… his appreciation of how the light falls. It seems as if his subjects were revealing themselves to him as he worked. and he just had the courage to take a chance, capturing them as he did.

I picked up a book about the artist Robert Motherwell in the museum gift shop and came across this quote regarding his imagination. It spoke to me, so I thought I’d share: “Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail.”

And now, welcome back for a fabulous Summer Quarter!

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