A young artist recently told me that working from observation was an antiquated endeavor. Why look at a still-life arrangement when taking a photograph of it would do just as nicely? We have, after all, reached a stage in human development when learning from stuff out there is moot. Getting your hands dirty—what’s the point? High tech has made low tech irrelevant, over and out.

The sculptor Jilaine Jones, whose work is at the New York Studio School, knows otherwise. Mass and volume, proportion and space, line as definition, and the ineluctability of gravity—these are universals best experienced firsthand. Without direct contact, art becomes a tinny imitation of itself—there are 40,000 years or so of world art to prove the point.  read more »