What Art Means to Me
by C. Valentine Kirby

I feel within an impulse, perhaps that divine impulse which has moved all races in all ages and in all climes, to record in enduring form the emotions that stir within.

I may model these emotions in clay, carve them in wood, hew them in stone, or forge them in steel. I may weave them in textiles, paint them on canvas or voice them in song: but whichever I do I must harken always to the song of the lark and the melody of the forest and stream and respond to the color of the rose and the structure of the lily, so that my creation may be in accord with God's laws and the universal laws of order, perfect fitness and harmony.

Moreover, I must make my creation good and honest and true, so that it may be a credit to me and live after I am dead, revealing to others something of the pleasure which I found in its making.

Then will my creation be Art whether I be poet or painter, blacksmith or cobbler, for I shall have labored honestly and lovingly in the realization of an ideal.

Davison, Marguerite Porter. A Handweaver's Pattern Book. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania: Marguerite Porter Davison, 1994.