an open letter to all who enter the studio:
“The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born.
Now is the time for monsters.”
This is an existential challenge,
and approaching existential challenges means we must look to
frameworks of existence,
NOT existing frameworks.
At the heart of existence is generativity,
and generativity is an evolutionary cycle.
“What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.
The forest is forever because it dies
and dies and so lives.” –Ursula LeGuin
Art making and art immersion is a practice of play.
OPS is working on developing fortifications
against the ephemeral state of art distribution to ensure that
you are the driver your experience, not the distribution platforms.
Because if ephemera and passive consumption
overrides rich, lingering experiences, we'd be
walking through the world blind to its beauty.
I started Open Play Studio to dissolve the
linearity and hierarchy of art experiences,
framing art as conversation, art as a tool for
exploring your inner and external words, for making sense
of emotional and material conditions for which language falls short.
The studio asks you to explore the edges of what art can do,
to not just follow a prescribed framework but instead
participate through creativity and play,
pursuing a “what if,” approach to art and material.
The process is the directive.
That is why at the heart of OPS is imagination,
because imagination is the predecessor of evolution.
Imagination asks us to suspend practicality and pragmatism,
to don a lens of expansion and consider the
edges of possibility in service of creation.
Being rooted in imagination means that
we can generate fruits that thrive,
that are rich and flavorful and juicy and nourishing.
You may not foresee what will be born,
but what is then born will tell the tale of its ingredients.
Within imagination lies the blueprint
that bridges figment and reality.
Let us be the monsters that imagine a new world into fruition.
