This post is the topic to be discussed during Making & Meaning Conversation on October 9. Making & Meaning Conversation is a live, one-hour video conversation that meets at 10 am (Pacific Time) every second and fourth Wednesday of each month. If you would like to join this conversation, please contact me at makingandmeaning@substack.com.
Why do we make art? What compels us, as human beings, to craft new objects that serve no apparent function for our survival? These are questions that anthropologist and ethologist, Ellen Dissanayake has considered in her studies of animal and human behaviour. Dissanayake proposes that all humans are endowed with an innate impulse to make things and designate them “extra-ordinary” or “special” despite their obvious lack of utility. In our next session of Making & Meaning Conversation, we will consider Dissanayake’s theory in relation to what four Canadian contemporary artists — Barbara Astman, Dominique Blain, Greg Staats, and Don Ritter — have to say about their impulse to make art.