When I moved to New York in November of 1992 I was amazed that for $1.25 I could take an underground roller-coaster all day long and never get off. The only experience I could relate to riding the subway for the first time was a roller-coaster. The experience was amazing and I remember being baffled as to why other New Yorkers were asleep on the train. Given a few months The experience wore off and I too was asleep on the train going from point A to Point B.

Complacency. How much content or how many ideas are around us… that we simply don’t see anymore because they are right in front of us day in and day out.

People ask me how can you travel as much as you do and still get work done? I think I get more work done because of traveling. Each month I’m dropped into a new setting, a new culture, new forms, new colors, new experiences that feed me with new content and ideas.

Shortly after visiting Zagreb, Split, and the island of Vis, Croatia I came back with a ton of new ideas and starting making a bunch of new work. After making a new poster for the building letters project. I got a few e-mails from some people in Croatia whom I had met and heard me give a lecture.

“Where do you get your ideas from?” my reply. “your beaches.”

If you have a chance to walk along the Mediterranean shores of Spain, Italy, or Croatia you’ll find along the beaches these tiny tile fragments hiding among the rocks, shells, and sand. What are they from? How did they get there? I’m not sure. I do have this fantasy that it’s a secret society that meets every so often bringing hand painted dinner-ware down to the beach late at night — and after an intense cult ritual they celebrate by breaking dishes on the beach and running home. Now if you actually know where it’s from and how it gets there… don’t mail me I would rather keep my elaborate fantasy.

My point? The few Croatian’s that mailed needed to realize that a world of content was right under their feet. As a creative person it becomes very difficult to truly SEE… SEE everything around you that complacency has taken hold of. Seeing something as if it we’re for the first time, like my first subway ride.

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