I was recently pondering what I stand "for" and what I stand "against" again, in this Grand Illusion/Great Mystery, in the context/through the lens of 'Personal Branding' (as one does)... A lot of it boils down to the 'ings' and the 'isms' for me. Static vs action. Polish and perfection vs the messiness of actual doing... I love Pat Bet-David's take on choosing what you stand against wisely, for it forms us as much as what we stand for and with... This is my attempt to capture 'weaving', but now that I stopped working on it, I think it has become more of a 'weavism'...I will revise the name I think. 😁🙃😎🔥 💜~ZG

Thrilled to be joining you beautiful humans in a creative community led by such a generous and talented artist, the one and only @Sarmed Mirza! I recently started a creative community myself, aimed at developing skills and sales, sharing as we learn, so I am excited about sharing experiences in both creative groups. I am a multi-medium artist--that means I am into a LOT! 😁🙃😎 My biggest-main things are Megasculptures, functional works of art (I aspire to build even bigger--Agriscuptures!) explorations in passive temperature control, natural and alternative construction (including domes, cob, cantonary arches, lime concrete, bottle walls, tire walls, and more!). I've written and published books, music, and am recently getting back into painting, with a brief interlude in a great beginner's sketchbook, which I am using to prepare for a beginner's sketching course. Meanwhile...I never did quite get the knack of portraits, even though I focused on faces/busts in ceramic for a decade or so and have been somewhat obsessed with faces. SOOOO I am Super Excited to break that old limiting belief and gain a new skill set! Thank you Sarmed! Here's some of the sketches I been doing, and some of my sculpture work (my first, smallest Megasculpture, The Foo Dog).

Hi everyone, I’m Aaron, and I joined this community because I’ve learned that art is humanity, emotion, and intention made tangible. I discovered this through studying works like Death Stranding 2 and Arcane - pieces where every frame carries deliberate meaning, where creators chose artistic integrity over commercial safety. Hideo Kojima, who created Death Stranding, says his body is “70% movies” - meaning he needs constant input from other art forms to create. I’ve realized I need the same. As someone building systems for human alignment, I need to witness how artists maintain intention through their practice. I’m working on something called AlignCore, which tries to do with human purpose what you do with visual observation - capture something essential before it disappears. The challenge I face is the same one you face: how do you preserve the human element when everything pushes toward efficiency and mechanization? This morning, listening to a song about someone who gained everything but lost their humanity in the process, I found myself unexpectedly moved to tears in my car. It hit me that artists are the ones who refuse to let that happen. Every piece you create is proof that intention still matters, that taking time to get something right is not inefficiency but necessity. I’m here to learn from your practice of maintaining humanity through repetition, through showing up even when inspiration doesn’t. Your courage to make something meaningful in a world obsessed with metrics is exactly the kind of courage I need to witness and understand. I work in systems and code rather than paint and canvas, but I believe the act of creation with intention is the same. In the coming days, I’ll share more about what brought me here - including the song that moved me this morning, and why I believe we’re all fighting the same battle against the mechanization of human expression. My hope in sharing this journey is that it might spark courage for someone here, or perhaps even inspire an art piece. After all, whether we work in pigment or purpose, we’re all trying to preserve what makes us human.

Dropping a heart felt thank you @Sarmed Mirza for daring to pursue your passion and creating the space for this opportunity I have to connect with pen, paper, and myself. Did my exercises this morning before my first call of the day. Everyday is packed with priorities and execution for me and making time to do THIS 🤌 fuels my spirit in ways I cannot express. It's nothing impressive, but the healing and energy from something so simple is undeniable. So thank you 🙏

People have asked this question for centuries, and every artist will answer it differently. For me, art is more than marks on paper or paint on canvas. Art is a way of seeing. It slows us down long enough to notice details we usually miss. The curve of a leaf, the shadow across a cheek, the way light changes in a single moment. In the act of drawing or painting, we pay attention. And that attention is a kind of love. And love to me is good, important, joyous, source of life. Art is also a way of shutting down the noise of the ego-mind. When we draw or paint, for a moment the stream of thoughts, about who we are, what we should be doing, how we are judged, quiets down. In that silence, something opens. We expand beyond time and space. Minutes slip by without us noticing. The past and future fall away, and we find ourselves in pure presence. That’s why even a simple sketch can feel profound, because in that moment, we’ve stepped outside of the ordinary chatter and touched something deeper. Art is also a way of processing what’s inside us. We carry resistance, judgment, shame, joy, memory, longing. When we make art, some of that inner world moves out of our heads and into form. A line can hold frustration. A sketch can hold curiosity. A painting can hold grief or gratitude. In this way, art is not just what we see, it’s also a way of letting go, of healing. And art is connection. Between you and your subject. Between you and yourself. Between you and others who witness what you’ve made. I’ve seen children laugh when drawing their parents for fun (ArtGym hack3), and parents moved to tears when they feel truly looked at for the first time. That’s art at its most human. So why make art? Because it reminds us that we’re alive. Because it helps us carry the weight of life with more ease. Because it trains us to see beauty and meaning even in ordinary things. And because it lets us explore the inner rooms of our human experience, places no one else can enter or regulate. In art, unlike in work or daily obligations, there is no boss, no rulebook, no expectation to meet. We can do whatever we want. If we can let go of the pressures and judgments of the outside world, art becomes one of the truest expressions of freedom we have.