MSI Press Blog

  Art isn’t just about technique. It’s about perception, rhythm, and the courage to follow a strange idea into the unknown. My cat lives that every day. He doesn’t paint. He doesn’t sculpt. He doesn’t write. But he creates — with movement, mood, and a flair for dramatic composition. Here’s what he taught me: Observe deeply. A cat notices everything — the flicker of light, the shift in tone, the way a shadow moves across the floor. I started seeing more, and drawing from it. Follow the impulse. Cats don’t second-guess. They leap, they chase, they pounce. I learned to trust my creative instincts instead of overthinking them. Embrace imperfection. A cat will knock over the paint water, walk across the sketch, and sit on the canvas. I stopped fighting mess and started integrating it. Create with presence. Cats don’t multitask. They focus. I began to make art with full attention — no distractions, no rush, just immersion. Mood is part of the medium. A cat’s posture, gaze, and...

Making Artists: The National Theater Institute’s Influence on a Writer   If art moves us, the impact never departs. It strikes an emotional chord that resonates into the recesses of our psyche forever. That’s how fourteen weeks at the National Theater Institute (NTI) affected me.   In the fall of 1980, I was twenty years old, badly dressed, clumsy, and thirty pounds overweight. I took what I was certain would be a permanent leave of absence from my college, with little optimism about my future or myself. I felt lost. I had trained as a stage manager in high school and college, and I loved theater, but enrolling in The National Theater Institute, more than anything else, was a means to buy time while I struggled to figure out what to do with the next phase of my life.     The National Theater Institute, located at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, offered a comprehensive, semester long theater training program for college-age students....