Lee Love

Background

About Lee Love

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” -W.B. Yeats I came to my personal understanding of Mingei and The Arts and Crafts Movement from working with my late teacher Tatsuzo Shimaoka and from observing the family farmers who were my neighbors in Mashiko, who lived according to the natural seasonal cycles. Distilled, it comes down to four basic principles: 1.Humans are naturally creative. We are informed by Nature about creativity and beauty. 2.Objects should be judged by how they fulfill the human need for creativity. Our tools are enablers. 3.We best function when we know the people whose products we depend upon and the people who likewise depend upon us. 4.When human creative needs are met, it is also beneficial to the ecology of the environment. In addition, as a maker, it is important to use materials of the place where you work and live or materials that are relevant to them. It is also important to listen to the materials and be informed by their strengths and weaknesses. Being true to the materials, rather than trying to hide what they are. Specialties: The Shaker craftsmen gave us these principles: Industry:"Do all your work as if you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow." Honesty:"Be what we seem to be; and seem to be what we really are; don't carry two faces." Functionalism:"That which in itself has the highest use possesses the greatest beauty."