STORIES FROM THE ARTS 65
walls. The images were symbols of nature: animals, plants, people and
cosmic events. All around the world people have made shrines in the
land at sacred sources of water and hauled stones to create centers
of ceremonial practice. In nature-based expressive arts we remember
and reclaim this history. We are not trying to emulate its trappings,
but to touch the source that has always inspired this pouring forth
of creativity and to celebrate our reciprocity with the landscape we
inhabit and the cosmos that birthed us.
Aesthetics in Western culture is usually associated with the area
of philosophy devoted to the question of what is beautiful. The word
aesthetics comes from the Greek aistesis , having to do with the senses,
in contrast to the word anesthetic , that which deadens and numbs us.
So aesthetics in expressive arts has to do with beauty that enlivens
us and intensifies our awareness of experience. Such beauty is not
always pretty. In expressive arts the concept of aesthetics is related
not to the traditional idea of cultural norms or formal rules of what is
considered beautiful, but to our human sensitivity and appreciation
of beauty and to our capacity to respond to whatever touches us.
Art as behavior
Anthropologist Ellen Dissanayake (1995, 2002, 2012) says that
human societies throughout history have always displayed some
form of art-making behavior. This behavior fulfills a basic human
biological need and is an integral part of daily communal social
life. Idealizing aesthetic experience as the province of only certain
functions, objects and peoples denies its biological and evolutionary
significance. Dissanayake defines art not as an elitist activity but as the
act of making special. In this sense everyone is an artist. The gardener
who arranges his plants with an eye to color and compatibility, the
hostess who puts fresh flowers on the table, the mother who puts a
small encouraging card in her child’s lunch—all of these are artists,
making experience special. Dissanayake feels that art has been falsely
set apart from life, thus diminishing its communal importance. In
conversation with Susie Gablik (1995), she adds that in modern