Books like Art Is a Way of Knowing

This book helped me release shame after a colleague of mine told me my work wasn’t “science.”

Here’s the truth: to create a healing platform, I needed to tap into ways of thinking that academia sees as “woo woo” and “savage.” I looked to the stars. I meditated. I did rituals and read myths.

Dr. Kimmerer, trained as a traditional botanist, realized that the Indigenous myths and stories she was told as a child contained scientific knowledge passed down for generations by her tribe.

She realized there were scientific truths her community knew for millennia that traditional scientists only discovered within the last 100 years. This is the power of Ancestral Intelligence, disregarded by the same science that ultimately created AI.

What stories, fables, and myths have taught you valuable lessons about the world?

Of all the creative self-help books out there, Twyla Tharp’s perspective stands out as one fueled by awareness and curiosity rather than grit and force.

For me, this gentler, more curious cultivation of creativity has proved sustaining as opposed to the conventional wisdom that suggests life must be pushed away or overcome to create. As a choreographer and dancer, her wisdom on building a life of creative expression is broad and encompassing, focusing on how one interacts with the world rather than the products one creates.

The inspiration in this book is followed up with practices that have changed the way I approach seeing the world, focusing my thoughts, and allowing the creative process to transport me to surprising places.

A great insight in my life has been realizing that the Western world has tricked us into believing there is only one way to know and understand the world.

What do stories of ancient cultures from across the world have to do with creativity and healing? Wade Davis has spent his life living intimately with other cultures and plants; the lessons captured in this book require us to take pause and realize everything we have taken for granted about what we know and how we know it.

As Davis says, "rediscovering the diversity of the human spirit" requires us to unshackle ourselves from our biases and recognize that some things can’t be explained or understood through the narrow lens of the Western world.

Creativity and the imagination are fundamental to being human; this book caused me to question what I was missing by not fully recognizing them as a way… show more.

I always seek to immerse myself in creative works like film, fiction, and music, and as a mother of three young children, I have now added children's books to this list.

The magic and simplicity of bringing together poetic voice and imagery in picture books have shown me the alchemy of weaving together mediums to convey emotion and meaning in a simple and powerful way.

Of the thousands of children’s books I have read (seriously!) this one struck me as a gem, exploring the vulnerability and enchanting realm of childhood, a place where creativity once roamed free within us.

This simple story of a mother and daughter and the beauty of the imagination and memory as one ages feels like an invitation made just for me asking me to reignite the spark of expression without all the added weight of adulthood.

Karen Gallas introduced me in the early 1970s to the integration of various forms of artistic expression in the education of young children, based on the work of Sylvia Ashton-Warner and Elwyn Richardson in New Zealand and the British Infant School movement, which inspired experimental education in the United States. 

Languages of Learning grew from Gallas’s classroom research exploring how artistic thinking enabled children with various language, cultural, and learning differences to participate fully in the learning process that she presented as “arts as epistemology” in a symposium with Maxine Greene and others published in the Harvard Educational Review. These foundations in childhood continuously inform artistic inquiry in all of life.

Jung’s Red Book (Liber Novus) is a masterpiece of art-based research.

Although he called his creations ‘nature,’ not ‘art,’ I describe art as a force of nature. In addition to saving his soul during a period of personal crisis, the ‘self-experiment’ perfected the methods, establishing him as a world-renowned figure and arguably the most sustained influence on psychotherapeutic practice to date. His firsthand experimentation exemplifies how personal artistic inquiry can transcend itself to be of use to others.

Where Jung’s heirs kept the manuscript in a vault for almost fifty years after his death, possibly concerned that the intimate expressions might jeopardize his “scientific“ image, the resoundingly positive response to it will set an important precedent for future art-based research. 

Ruth-Mateus-Berr at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and her team of colleagues demonstrate the interface between art-based research and social transformation.

With the support of the Austrian Science Fund, they are conducting an ongoing project furthering social empathy for people living with dementia and improving their lives through art created in community. The research offers what Mateus-Berr calls artistic “portrayals” and “interpretations” of the dementia experience, in various art forms including digital media, with the goal of learning about the condition and changing perceptions of it.

The project catalogue documenting the ongoing research, which has been continuously presented in various art venues including the Venice Biennale, can be viewed at the DEMEDARTS website.

Ross Prior is the creator of a world community committed to advancing the practice of art-based research that has grown from his founding of the Journal of Applied Arts & Health.

A primary goal of the journal, and this collection written by contributors to it, is Prior’s effort to build confidence in artistic practice as research that generates “authentic artistic knowledge” and helps artists deepen their insights into “what they do.” 

In response to the current demand for evidence-based research, he consistently asks—how is the evidence defined? Isn’t the outcome of artistic inquiry the art itself, with social impact determined by its rigor, quality, and persuasiveness? Can we confidently make the case for art’s inclusion in research furthering learning, human understanding, public health, and global well-being?

There’s been a lot of research on how girls fall prey to diet culture, lose their self-confidence, disappear into disordered eating/eating disorders/low self-esteem at puberty. A lot of that is triggered by living in a culture that’s so messed up around food, eating, and body image. So I’m always looking for tools to give girls to help them navigate that treacherous time, and this is one of the books I like to recommend.

This was such a blast to read with my kids! I loved how interactive it was and the creative rhyming used. It didn’t just keep their attention, but it also included a fun activity to do together afterward with stickers (included in the book), which made the experience even more fun for us to do together!

The illustrations are playful and unique, really bringing the story to life in a way that keeps everyone engaged. Even after five years of having it on our shelf, it’s still my go-to book for storytime.