Community, Leadership, Experimentation, Diversity, & Education
Pittsburgh Arts, Regional Theatre, New Work, Producing, Copyright, Labor Unions,
New Products, Coping Skills, J-O-Bs...
Theatre industry news, University & School of Drama Announcements, plus occasional course support for
Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.
CMU School of Drama
Monday, March 31, 2025
Embracing Uncertainty: what we can all learn from how artists thrive in an unpredictable world
theconversation.com: In a recent interview, the 91-year-old Trinidadian artist John Lyons described painting as “an adventure in creative uncertainty. It is a way of existing in a world we still know very little about.”
A similar perspective forms the central theme of entrepreneur Margaret Hefferman’s latest book, Embracing Uncertainty. This is a spiritual successor to her previous book, Uncharted, which portrayed uncertainty as an inevitable aspect of modern life that should be embraced rather than controlled.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Obviously, we all know that the world around us is a scary one, especially for people in the arts and humanities. Even in the sciences, where something so “lucrative” is being defunded. It’s actually insane. This article is a good one to read right now, and I’m sure the timing was intentional. It’s really interesting to hear their reasons as to why the arts are crucial to the development of society. Within K-12 (at least public school), the arts aren't held to that high of a status. Its importance is often questioned and viewed as a creative outlet for students to fill their time with. What people are failing to understand, including me before devoting my higher education to pursuing a BFA is that it is so much more than a time filler. It’s the act of trying to solve and give answers to questions, like science. So much of history is documented and created by art, since it's something created in a time and place.
I don’t know how I feel about this article because I feel like it’s kind of saying that a career in art and the entertainment industry at large means that you have to embrace a life of uncertainty and never putting down roots and you kind of have to be the stereotypical artist who wanders all over the place trying to find that one muse or that one spark that lights their creative muscles a blaze and then helps them produce the craziest of crazy masterpieces. I don’t know. I feel like art can have stability and it really depends on the path you choose and what you value in life. I feel like maybe it is true that in order to succeed and gain fame and recognition, you might have to embrace the uncertainty but if you want a stable life, you can have that as an artist too and it’s not just one size fits all for every person that pursues this career.
Post a Comment