Creating Meaning is the Mother of all Arts

One experience over the course of this year that has been a real pleasure for me has been to work with and get to know the team at a client business in Cayman, a wonderful architecture and design firm called Design Cayman. As part of my work with them, I got the opportunity to do one thing I particularly love, to uncover “hidden assets” so we could then express them in service of clients. Part of this became the phrase “We know the Art of Building”, which anchors their comprehensive new website, launched around three months ago.

Today, though, I highlighted one of their resident architects, Mariska Peel, who now also leads creation of their monthly newsletter (visit their site to sign up). The December 2020 newsletter just came out and it was centred on this passage:

..all projects, no matter how big or how small, start with sketches. Wassily Kandinsky hit the nail on the head when he said; “Everything starts with a dot.” We believe conceptual ideas cannot be expressed without the presence of a pen. Sketches translate our clients’ ideas and thoughts and sculpt them into reality. These spaces create opportunities for memories to form Meaning.

Creating Meaning is the Mother of all Arts.

It is of utmost importance at Design Cayman to create meaningful spaces, which echoes in our mantra; “Exceptional Design Elevates the Human Spirit.”

I emailed Mariska to ask if that phrase was a quote from someone. Yes, Frank Lloyd Wright said: “The Mother Art is Architecture”, but no, Mariska wrote this phrase herself. What a hidden asset, a gem, she is within the Design Cayman team.

Another great designer, Da Vinci, said “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” (I riffed off that line in a post here). This also has me go back to a post full of single line thoughts: “the longest writing. can be one line“. Finally, this line inspires me to think back to all the many posts I have written around Viktor Frankl, author of “Man’s Search for Meaning”.

I love how Mariska’s line elegantly and concisely blends our desire for meaning and our desire for art, for beauty.

Wondrous. thank you!