Communication Arts has a major birthday coming up next year; the March/April issue will mark its 50th anniversary. In a recent e-mail, the editors asked the columnists to think about what we would like to include, with the caveat, “We want to look back and look forward.”

Usually when people talk about looking back, they discuss how much has changed, but it’s also important to identify what repeats. This has been on my mind as I begin to review my 24 (OMG!) years’ worth of columns. What themes have repeated? What endures? The more I read, the more I think about you, my readers. What still matters to you?

As you look back at your career—whether it is less than 2 years or, like CA, approaching 50—what are the themes that have repeated for you? What influences remain and recur? To provide some structure for looking back, I have referenced a few of my columns that are about just that: reflection.

My attention to this subject began in 1993. In the May/June column titled “Reflection,” I wrote that I had more and more information coming at me, but I seemed to be absorbing less and less. “Our everyday communication technology—electronic mail, telephones, faxes, voice mail—encourages us to move quickly from one piece to another. There is no encouragement to keep words, printed or electronic, in front of our eyes for more than the time that it takes to skim them. And just as this technology does not encourage us to reflect on what we read, it often discourages us from reflecting on what we author. Do we make decisions and solve problems with an abundance of speed and a dearth of contemplation?”

Four years later, I was still thinking about our lack of reflec­tion. In “The Value of Time” [March/April 1997]: “We tend to give the most attention to whatever we have constructed most recently. Because of this, we miss out; we don’t consider the accumulated evidence of the passage of time.”

I added an anecdote about a class I was teaching in which I asked students to keep a journal and take note of the media and technology that surrounded them daily. My students complained: “Why do we have to do this every day? I don’t have anything new to say!” I told them, “The point of keeping this journal is not to have something new to say. It’s the exact opposite: The point is to find out what you have to say that is not new. When you consciously observe something repeatedly, on a daily basis, you find out what is lasting, what sustains, what you think about the most. You discover the essence.”

Eight years later, I revisited this theme in “Visual Reflection Notebooks” [March/April 2005], when I wrote about a technique I developed for translating past influences into a form that can shed light on the evolution of one’s work.

“The idea for Visual Reflection Notebooks came from my desire to locate the common threads in my work from the past decade. Part of my difficulty was that the work encom­passed many different forms: graphic design, sculpture, installation, dance, photography and writing.

“Like many of you, in addition to my portfolios, I had a stock­pile of outside inspiration: article clippings, gallery guides, quotes and reproductions of imagery, all of which have con­tributed to my own development. I took a big chunk of these disparate elements and reduced them to a common denomi­nator by making small photocopies. I pasted them into a blank, 4 x 6 inch hardbound sketchbook. The sequencing was purposely random, as though I had shuffled a deck of cards.

“The result was a single object that allowed me to view, in my hands at one time, years of my process and production. It also contained surprises: juxtapositions that revealed simi­larities of old and new work, influences of artists that I had forgotten, a quote that had new meaning when paired with a new image, and so on. Unfinished work predicted the begin­ning of new work. This tiny notebook emphasized patterns that, without these serendipitous comparisons, I might never have seen.”

I believe that nothing can replace the value of experience gained from the passage of time. My grandmother lived to be over one hundred years old, and in the last years of her life, she enjoyed watching her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren play with new “inventions”: laptops, cell phones, video games, iPods. None of these baffled or amazed her, nor did she consider them to be evidence of extraordinary changes. On the contrary: They were part of a continuum—evolving answers to an ongoing repetition of needs, inspirations, passions and goals. That still matters. CA

Author’s note: For a copy of the columns referenced, e-mail me at wendy@wrichmond.com.

© 2008 W. Richmond