We are surrounded by gorgeous, gracious, and complicated objects, people, and systems. To honor what is keeps us in contact with the pleasures and lessons. Doing so mandates various actions:

• Acknowledging and celebrating people’s contributions.
• Taking care of objects, stewardship.
• Hearing when someone says “No”.
• Finding solutions from the essential reality of the situation at hand.

Artists are constrained by the particular properties and limitations of their materials (and by their skills of manipulation). They also find inspiration in those very limitations. Permaculture observes higher productivity at the edges of rivers, fields, and forests. Limitations can be re-understood as fertile edges. In any problem or situation, the specifications and limitations can become the essence of the solution.

These days when everything we want to share needs marketing and branding, finding the images and stories to represent our work is as important as doing it. Rather than imposing arbitrary images, identity, and professionalism, learn to observe what is, see its unique resonance, and showcase it both symbolically and culturally.