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Letters

July 17, 2015 45

Absolute beginner

A subscriber who wishes to remain anonymous wrote, “I can’t help wanting to begin again. It was in the beginning that I had the most fun, but now that I’m a professional with an audience and known style I’m not sure how.”

Thanks, Anonymous. Your email arrived while I was tying a bowline for an 80-year-old sailing captain. He watched from under a black wool fisherman’s cap, his eyes calm and crinkling upward. Not yet a sailor, I fed the line through and under itself, while a kind of mental untying occurred inside — a smooth pridelessness — and I surrendered to my vast unknowns.

Letters

July 10, 2015 20

Burt’s bliss

Until recently, a retired beekeeper named Burt Shavitz was living in a 400-square-foot converted turkey coop in Parkman, Maine. He had a refrigerator, a radio, cold running water, a wood stove, and the wag of his Golden Retriever’s tail. He called his home “Camp,” having built onto it 40 years earlier with scrap lumber and windows he’d found at the dump. When asked once if he needed the Internet, he replied, “Like a hole in the head.”

Letters

June 23, 2015 41

The Starbucks experience

Recently I wrote a letter about the similarity of running a business and being an artist. As usual a whole bunch of artists agreed with me, and a whole bunch of others told me I’d been drinking my turps. Then yesterday I picked up a reading sample–that’s book-talk for a preview of an upcoming book. The Starbucks Experience, Five Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary by psychologist Joseph Michelli will be out next month.

Michelli was granted unlimited access to the inside workings of Starbucks. In case you didn’t know, Starbucks is the biggest chain of coffee shops in the world. There are now more than 11,000 outlets in 37 countries–five new ones start pouring coffee every day.

Letters

June 12, 2015 29

Let there be light

Janet Coulson of Cobourg, Ontario wrote, “I’m about to move into a condo where my studio will be in the basement with small, high windows. Do you know anything about lighting or could you direct me to someone who does? My studio now has a large window as well as sliding glass doors. I’m a little worried about the change.”

Thanks, Janet. You want a space that provides steady ambient light with options for dramatic lighting of painting subjects and a secondary easel area for reviewing work. Here’s what you’ll need:

Light that doesn’t change too much over the course of the day.
Light that’s not too warm or too cool.
Light that delivers a full spectrum of colour.
Enough light.

Letters