However dark, however demanding the realities of existence are, artists provide the lift, the light, the ways to make it through. They help us find the joys and delights, the hopes we need for our days and hours. I am grateful for their gifts.
I have the same sense of discovery and exhilaration from objects of design and everyday use - I am inspired by the buildings in my city, by park greenery and dazzling store windows, by the jaunty strollers and umbrellas and billboards I walk past. Just strolling our streets, we encounter creativity every single day.
I own works by women artists; it is hard for me to see, literally to see, how women and men differ in the quality of their work. Why are women artists less known and less admired?
I'm hoping someday that we'll be able to start a consortium with places like Carnegie Hall to work on early childhood education. I really feel that's the most important place to put the arts.
I'm so lucky in my life, but I'm so unlucky in my abilities. I love art so much, but I'm unable to produce it. I can't even draw a dog that doesn't look like a horse.
If it's taught well, art really is important to kids early on. It helps children develop language and allows them to see themselves in a way that isn't right or wrong, because if they draw an animal with five legs instead of four, nobody's criticizing them for it.
In my own life, I share my home with works by artists like Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Jackie Windsor and so many others, whose creativity is clear and fresh and compelling; the works break through the usual, and they inspire creativity; they inspire responses and understanding.
My education in the arts began at the Cleveland Museum of Art. As a Cleveland child, I visited the museum's halls and corridors, gallery spaces and shows, over and over. For me, the Cleveland Museum was a school of my very own - the place where my eyes opened, my tastes developed, my ideas about beauty and creativity grew.
Of course, museums and galleries and art spaces will continue to ground the art world. But certainly the public - as well as artists - also benefit when art is encountered in other everyday situations.
The arts capture our insecurities, quicken our instincts, guide us through threats. They help us know ourselves. They help us know each other. They help us know better.
The need we have for information is great, and we get it from many admirable sources. The need we have for understanding and acceptance is much greater. The arts are uniquely able to help us meet the greater needs.
