Some rules and hints for teachers and students

By Corita Kent
Whole Earth Catalog
Spring 1986

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.
RULE TWO: General duties of a student - pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.
RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher - pull everything out of your students.
RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.
RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined - this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make.
RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.
RULE EIGHT Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
RULE TEN: "We're breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities." (John Cage)
HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything - it might come in handy later.

SOFA

I saw the SOFA Show in New York at the Armory last week. I was somewhat appalled by the overall lack of real quality or inovation in the show itself, seemed like a glorified craft fair. Lots of jewelry and very highly polished pots. There were a couple of acceptions, though. The highlight, in my humble opinion, was Goro Suzuki's wonderful tea bowls at Gallery Gen. Like a quilt, they are reconstructed fragments of simply glazed ceramic, joined with Kintsugi, a traditional method of repairing broken pottery by laying gold on the adhesive in the crack. Aparently this is especially true of tea bowls. His use of this technique with great intention exhibits a real flare for reinventing an impossibly old and used form. So poetic. I was reminded of Cezanne in their gorgeousness and true innovative vigor.

Another breath of fresh air was Jun Kaneko, my old mentor. His famous Dungos, always bold and undeniable were on display at Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art.

Marcia Lyons had these cool cubes dripping with paint on view at David Richard Contemporary.

I look forward to the day when "art" and "craft" end their meaningless war.