G. Steve Journal

Reflections on photography, art, beauty and the natural landscape.

Author: G. Steve Jordan

  • Something Interesting

    “However bad life is, what’s important is to make something interesting out of it. And that has a lot to do with the physical world, with looking at stuff, snow and light and the smell of your screen door and whatever constitutes your phenomenal existence from moment to moment.

    – Anne Carson

  • Every Day

    Every day is a god,
    each day is a god,
    and holiness holds forth in time.
    I worship each god,
    I praise each day splintered down,
    splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk,
    a husk of many colors spreading,
    at dawn fast over the mountains split.
    Holy the Firm.

    Annie Dillard, April 30, 1945 – September 15, 2026

     

  • The Rarest Wildflowers

    “I dream of a quiet man who explains nothing and defends nothing,
    but only knows where the rarest wildflowers are blooming,
    and who goes, and finds that he is smiling not by his own will.”

                                                                                                                                                        – Wendell Berry

     

  • Creativity Happens

    “I want to be connecting with the subconscious, if I can call it that… There are not too many words to describe the real deep inner part of a human being… I want to be at that place where everything is blotted out and where creativity happens, and to get there I practice… You have to have the skills, then you want to not think when you’re playing, that’s when you let whatever deep level of creativity, spirituality, I mean, you know these words are so inadequate these days, but you want to get to this place where they exist.”

    – Sonny Rollins

  • Not Think

    “I want to be connecting with the subconscious, if I can call it that… There are not too many words to describe the real deep inner part of a human being… I want to be at that place where everything is blotted out and where creativity happens…

    You have to have the skills, then you want to not think when you’re playing, that’s when you let whatever deep level of creativity, spirituality, I mean, you know these words are so inadequate these days, but you want to get to this place where they exist.”

    – Sonny Rollins

  • Not Sayable

    “There are things that are not sayable,

    that’s why we have art.”

                                                 – Leonora Carrington

     

  • A Signpost

    I suspect that what you’re looking for is something that will actually confirm that you’re a human being.
    We all have this terrible feeling of isolation and loneliness.
    Art is a signpost.
    It’s the thing that we do that makes us realize that we’re not alone.
    It’s the communication of the human spirit.
    It’s the one area where you mustn’t have caution or inhibition.
    You have to be prepared to crash your plane and walk away from it.

                                                                                        – David Bowie

  • Greatest Gift

    Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro on Leonardo da Vinci–

     

    “What an artist brings to the world is a way of gazing into it.

    Can you look at it from my eyes?

    That’s the greatest gift an artist brings.”

     

  • The Medium

    “The artist is the medium

    between his fantasies

    and the rest of the world.”

                                                                                               –Federico Fellini

     

  • Inevitable

    The object isn’t to make art,

    it’s to be in that wonderful state

    that makes art inevitable.

                  – Robert Henri