home | about | collection | giving | museum catalogs | exhibits | media

These pieces began with a simple recognition: life is shaped by our connections to other people. Every conversation, every shared moment, every encounter leaves its mark. Together, these threads weave the tapestry that makes us who we are. Art lives in this same space of connection - it emerges from our accumulated experiences and travels outward to touch others, adding threads we never intended, creating patterns we cannot see.

We Are Here

You stand at a point in time and space that will never exist again. This light, this moment, this particular confluence of experience and vision - it's already passing.

The work you can make today, you cannot make tomorrow. Tomorrow you'll be different. The world will be different. The conditions that exist right now, the resources you have, the ideas stirring, the way you see, they're temporary.

Trust Your Eyes

A View from the Studio | Ignacio Escobar

"Art is a language, spoken by the universe”

Inspired by his father's paintings, Escobar is exploring the depths of his creativity as a visual artist. His Colombian heritage erupts in color and form as he experiences this language and embraces its lessons. "Inspiration is free. It is everywhere. A song, the sea, a love, the sky. Combine that with one's turbulence, entanglements, consciousness and the ethereal, and you have art."

The Problem with Problems

Life and creativity are fundamentally about problem-solving. Strip away everything else and that's what remains: identifying what isn't working and figuring out what might.

But we've developed a strange relationship with problems. We treat them as interruptions to life rather than the substance of it. We avoid them, deny them, delegate them away. Anything but face them directly.

Choosing Light

“Whoever is happy will make others happy too. He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!”  —Anne Frank, "The Diary of a Young Girl"

Anne Frank wrote these words while hiding in an Amsterdam attic, facing circumstances most of us can barely imagine. Yet even there, in that cramped space with darkness closing in, she understood something essential about the human spirit: happiness and courage are not luxuries we wait for—they're choices we make, and they spread.

The Nativity

The Nativity is one of the most interpreted subjects in art history. Our catalog brings together historical paintings and sculptures from museums worldwide - from a 4th-century Byzantine relief to Botticelli's mystical vision, from Giotto's frescoes in Assisi to Rembrandt's intimate etchings.

Each artist found their own way into this ancient story. Some bathed it in candlelight. Others placed it beneath golden halos or Renaissance architecture. Each made it their own - not through invention, but through seeing.

Inspired Action

When inspiration stirs something within us and we respond by making (whether with paint, words, movement, or any form of creative expression) we step into a different relationship with existence. We're no longer just witnesses. We become participants in bringing something new into the world.

This is where life gains its fullness. Not in the accumulation of experiences or the passage of time, but in those moments when we feel compelled to create and actually do it.

Walking Toward Wonder

"The path to inspiration isn't marked—it appears only when you start walking toward wonder."

An artist begins this way. Not with certainty, but with curiosity. They don't wake up knowing exactly what they'll create. They only know they're drawn toward something—a color that won't leave them alone, a question that keeps returning, a feeling they can't quite name. So they start walking. They pick up the brush, the camera, the clay. They begin.

When Time Stands Still

"In the creative life, you must negotiate with time itself—stealing moments from obligations, bartering sleep for inspiration, and learning when to surrender to the process."

This is the contract every creative person signs: time will never simply be given. It must be negotiated, borrowed, occasionally taken by force. Artists promise themselves just two hours, knowing it will become four. They can't always explain how the light in their minds refuses to wait until morning, how a vision demands to be captured before it dissolves into memory.

The Apple Seed

Consider the apple seed. Smaller, weighing almost nothing, looking utterly ordinary. You could hold a dozen in your palm and barely feel their weight. Yet within that tiny shell lies something extraordinary: the potential for a tree that will reach toward the sky, spread its branches wide, bear fruit, and scatter thousands more seeds across the earth.

When inspiration touches you, whether as artist or viewer, you're holding a seed. It might arrive as a whisper, an image, a feeling you can't quite name. Something small. Something that others might not even notice.

Where Art Starts

This morning, before you woke up, God was already making art.

He painted the sky in gradients no human hand could match. He orchestrated light falling through branches, creating shadows that shift and dance with the breeze. He composed the music of leaves and the singing of birds—a symphony so subtle you have to stop and listen to hear it.

Art's Contradictions

As artists, we live with a beautiful contradiction. We work with grand ambitions to move people, to capture life, to express what words cannot, yet we know our reach is limited. We can't fix the world, but that's never been the point.

Makers do two essential things: "First, we admit they can't straighten the world out." It's a humbling admission, but one that frees us to focus on what we can do.

Simplicity takes wisdom

The wisdom of simplicity trains the eye to distinguish between what adds and what distracts, what deepens and what merely decorates. When you learn to see simplicity not as poverty but as concentrated meaning, not as lack but as deliberate choice, not as easy but as the hardest-won wisdom---then you understand that clarity of purpose made visible is among art's highest achievements.

A Laboratory for Visual Thought

Plucking Thistles

"I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow." —Abraham Lincoln

What is the purpose of art, if not this? Every artist who has ever lifted a brush, shaped clay, or captured light through a lens has faced the thistle-strewn ground of our world...

A View from the Studio | Maurice Quillian

"Music is God's glue, it holds the Universe together." This is how Maurice Quillinan describes the soundtrack to his creative practice a philosophy that extends to his entire approach to artmaking in his Limerick, Ireland studio. "When I close the door it's just me and the dogs and the work and music and no phone," he explains. "It's the best place in the world just to concentrate on painting and drawing."

Your Brain on Art

Finding Art in the Unexpected

Walls, Windows & Doors: a metaphor for creativity

Where Does Inspiration Come From?

It’s a question that has baffled, enchanted, and driven creative minds throughout history. Where does inspiration come from? Is it a bolt from the blue, a whisper in the wind, or something found in the everyday moments we so often overlook?

The Threads That Bind

In this dance between faith, family, and freedom, art becomes more than aesthetic achievement it becomes a bridge between souls, a record of our struggles and triumphs, and a testament to the enduring human need to create meaning from the raw materials of existence. Each brushstroke, each word, each note carries within it the accumulated wisdom of generations while reaching toward possibilities not yet imagined.

Celebrating the Journey of Art & Play

The Alchemy of Wonder

Negotiating with Doubt

Every morning, the artist sits down to work and immediately finds themselves in a familiar negotiation. On one side of the table sits confidence, insisting that today's work will matter, that the world needs what they have to offer. On the other side lounges doubt, arms crossed, asking with a smirk: "But really, who cares?"

This is the daily diplomacy of the creative life. Unlike other professions where external validation provides regular proof of worth, artists must constantly broker peace between these two fundamental forces.

Einstein's Miracle Philosophy & the Creative Spirit

The Viewer's Journey

Every viewer embarks on their own journey of recognition when encountering art, creating "recognition moments" when we see something in a painting, read something in a poem, or hear something in music that makes us think, "Yes, that's exactly how I feel, but I never had words for it." These moments transform the gallery experience from passive observation into an active journey of collaboration between viewer and creator.

What's the Point!

Creating something with our hands and hearts asks us to bring together everything we know and feel, blending technique with intuition, memory with imagination. This process teaches our minds to dance with uncertainty, to find comfort in not knowing exactly where we're headed. We become more flexible thinkers, better at seeing connections and possibilities that weren't obvious before.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing about art and creativity is how they honor our need to make something beautiful, meaningful, or joyful for its own sake.

The Inner Voice

The inner voice is both one of a creative person's most powerful tools and their greatest potential obstacle. How you relate to this internal dialogue can make or break your creative journey.

At its best, your inner voice serves as an intuitive guide, helping you sense when something feels authentic or when you're moving in the right direction. It's the part of you that whispers "yes, that's it" when you hit on something meaningful, or suggests unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. Many creatives describe learning to trust this subtle inner knowing, especially when it conflicts with external expectations or conventional wisdom.

Duty over Dreams

Jefferson's sacrifices were substantial. He postponed completing Monticello's dome for nearly a decade. His plans for the University of Virginia's architecture sat in drawers while he navigated political storms. Though he despised public speaking, he delivered crucial addresses that shaped a nation. He gave up his quiet scholarly pursuits for the messy work of governance.

© 2026 Sasse Museum of Art | 501(c)3 Non-profit Organization | FIN: 90-0981234