Aesthetic Statement

There is no greater tragedy than being inhibited when experiencing a sensation. There is no sin in an aesthetic experience.

Aesthetically pleasing experiences are sensorial. The cognitive response follows the sensation. Aesthetic experiences are best when they are unforeseen and completely overwhelming. They are a catalyst for a response or reaction and are unique to each occasion.

The response can be internal or external, verbal or a fleeting thought, emotional, quite major or quite minor. The sensation can cause you to spend too much money or cry or laugh or do an array of compulsive things.

Many characteristics can exemplify an aesthetic experience for me. Certain colors including, but not limited to olive green (or variations of), deep reds such as Tuscan Red #937, and versions of orange when not unlike a pumpkin or a burnt version of itself can all make me swelter up. Items or people or moments that involve things, motions, or sounds that are lovely, vulnerable, strong, or severe almost suck me up into themselves, as if I cannot live another moment without possessing some aspect of them.

On the other end of possession, repetition is a characteristic that takes hold of me on a daily basis. Repeated shapes, forms, colors, and most importantly pattern create textures that reach though my eyeballs and grab me by my being, sending me into a series of uncontrollable seizure and excitement.

Processes that involve repeated movements are filled with a ton of aesthetic bits. You have to think and plan to achieve the final outcome, but the motions and techniques that are involved in executing a process are nothing less than sensational! Forcing a favorite spoon through the dense batter or dough of something sweet or a knife through the flesh of a fruit or vegetable creating just the right texture or size for your creation is so satisfying.

And Metal! Metal! Dragging a saw blade through the restrictive material over and over! Resituating the stock with repeated hammer blows! Disrupting surface texture with the sweeping motions of sandpaper scrapes of a file, or echoing tool marks! Good Lord! I can’t even think straight!

I give myself up to these moments. I surrender my self-control – these aspects of life, of existing may have me. My sin, my shame, my guilt, lie outside of these experiences.