30 Aug 2026
31. ❝ Open Systems
I came to think that art is exactly not what religion is. That it’s not about absolutes and it has to do with the condition of being human, which is not ever to be able to deal with absolutes. We live in a world of doubts, a world of uncertainties, a world of ironies.
—Kirk Varnedoe (1946–2003), Professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey
The 20th century saw the birth of a quiet revolution in western thought. There are challenges to find new ways of thinking and doing in all fields. Those at the end of the Middle Ages and Renaissance didn’t know what they were in the middle of because the modern era had just begun. It is over now, but we can barely see the outlines of a new framework.
What is clear is that instead of a deterministic predict-and-control system, biology’s open systems model is here. Gone is the certainty of laws and uniform relations. Alternative patterns and multiple interpretations are the basis for constructing meaning.
John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design, is a visual artist, designer, computer engineer, and former professor at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says, “We are learning to look at objects not in isolation, but within the context of everything that surrounds them — how they fit into the entire fabric of society.”
Despite the software that makes creativity seem easy, he says, “The truth is, creativity doesn’t come easy. It comes hard. It demands discipline and knowledge, and application.”
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In this turbulent environment, it is easy for tiny temporary single-issue groups to form and re-form at high speed, looking for ways to leverage their particular issue. Consider the case of Anton Drexler, a railroad machinist in 1919. He headed a tiny fringe group in Munich. At its first public meeting 111 people attended. The 30-minute speaker: Adolf Hitler.
There are many explanations for Hitler’s rise, but thinking of the chaos of non-linear systems, two things are clear: pressure from outside carries more weight, and positive feedback creates snowball effects. People don’t think for themselves.
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Few people suggest arts and crafts as preparation for anything relevant in dangerous times. They are. A good example is scientist, artist, and writer David Carroll. Trained at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at Tufts, he is best known — besides winning a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2006 — for the five books he’s written and illustrated about turtles, natural history, and his life. “Following the Water” was a 2009 finalist for the National Book Award. The drawings are beautiful, the writing visual, the science compelling.
“What good is it to be alive on earth and never come to know at least one place?” he asks in the 2009 book. “We don’t even try to know it with our senses, much less with our minds and spirits.” Carroll was trained to see — parts and wholes. He helps others do the same.
I wasn’t thinking of profound shifts in large systems when I began my long affair with arts and crafts. My focus was narrow — home. The more I learned, the more I undertook, the more tools I used, the wider the world became. I saw how elements combine to create unity. By making things. By recognizing the whole is bigger than the parts.
William Maslow said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Arts and crafts gave me many more means to understand, interact, appreciate life. More tools.
It has been a way to gather hopes, plans, colors, shapes. To leave something for the tomorrow we cannot see. A story.
“Once upon a time, there was a home…”
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