Teresa Lind

            What is worth making? 

This is a question that I ask myself with every new piece or series. 

Always in my mind as I work is the pursuit of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.  I view these as objective ideas rather than subjective.  My work is the catalyst by which I communicate these ideas, what I consider to be conceptions of utmost urgency and importance. 

Aristotelian and Thomastic thought interest me in that they possess a vision of “rightness” and a sense of ought.  Aristotle laid the foundation that Thomas Aquinas eventually followed.  Both advocate the idea that good and evil exist and that they are not equal; that, in fact, good is better than evil and that evil exists only as the absence of good.  Both also hold to the notion that truth is something for which humans ought to strive and that beauty, too, is real and worth pursuing.  Too, the artistic movements that have followed these ideas in the past speak most clearly to me of human purpose: my purpose.

In these particular works, The Seven Virtues and The Seven Vices, I am investigating opposites and advocating choosing the “better.”  However, by introducing the fourteen busts that represent the undulations of human life, called This, Too, Shall Pass (II), I bring in the reality of the fluctuation of states and emotions that human beings experience. 

I recently discovered that there was a philosophical term to describe the idea that, through these works, I am attempting to bring across.  The term is Meliarism.  It is the belief that the world can be made a better place through individual action.  The end of this is a utopia, of course, that will never come to total fruition.  It is the aspiration toward it, however, that will, over time, improve the state of our being.  It is not by standing on a political platform or preaching from a pulpit that the world becomes a better place.  In my estimation, the answers are not black and white.  The world becomes more beautiful through making individual decisions for the greater good in as many situations as possible.  It is by sitting down with your neighbor and discussing important issues.  I believe that by affecting our personal circles, by trying to conduct our affairs with love and by being responsible, the larger world is eventually affected as well. 

            Why should anyone look at my work?

I want the audience to know that I care about them and work hard for them.  This work is about you and for you and, when it is finished, I become the audience as well.  I think about us when as I make the work, hoping that the craftsmanship is appealing and that we will like to look at it, but more importantly that the concept, and the means by which it is conveyed, stirs our souls.