If you read the book By Hand and Eye, it gives your spouse the right to bust your chops. You’re the guy or gal who read all about “learning to see” and you walk out of the house wearing a brown sock on one foot and a black one on the other. Or when they move your favorite crackers from their usual place on the grocery store shelves and now you can’t find them. Or the cupboard doors you leave wide open in the kitchen, or that spot you missed with the paint roller after everything’s washed up and put away.

It’s even worse when you’re one of the guys who wrote the book about learning to see. My wife pulls out “the learning to see” line, every time I can’t find the can opener in the junk drawer. Yet I take the abuse with a grain of salt. Despite not being able to find my RED Swiss army knife just six inches from my nose, deep down I know I’ve learned to see higher up and deeper in,  I find myself daily taking in new details in the stonework above the windows on an old schoolhouse on the way to work. I see the way that tree limbs form an arc overhead and note how the curves seem to play off one another. I notice details and depth in furniture pieces that surprise and make me want to look closer. It’s not because I’ve learned formulas or recipes about curves. It’s because I’ve come to understand what lies beneath a curve or the geometry behind a form. Sort of how a chef learns how different spices blend to create new flavors.

Hidden in plain sight, details jump out to your eye.

That’s what the book By Hand & Eye is all about and it never gets old. It only gets better. If you’d like to purchase a copy here’s a link.  

 

George R. Walker