/blog

In the latest edition of Subtle Maneuvers, Mason Currey quotes the artist Charles Ray:

I don't see sculpture as a “practice”–I'm almost allergic to that word. My dentist has a practice; I have a behavior. For me the activity of making sculpture is a mental and physical behavior.

It prompted him to write "I'm not sure if I totally understand the distinction".

For me, the distinction between a practice and a behaviour is intentionality. A practice is something deliberate, repeated, steps towards something to be strived for, whereas a behaviour is automatic, instinctive, innate, just something you do as a matter of course.

Perhaps the goal is to so deeply internalise a practice that it becomes a behaviour, something as natural as breathing.