“Our culture is anti-hand; it thinks it’s better to work with your head. Everybody aspires to go to college, so they don’t have to work with their hands, yet hands are a source of intelligence. You divorce yourself from a part of your intelligence without them. To work with disembodied hands is perfect; you have all the intelligence, but don’t submit to the sentimentality that says handmade is more valuable. The “maker’s movement” is not sentimental.
As a little kid, I saw my grandfather draw from across the room. I saw harmony between eye/brain, hand and heart/spirit; I was astonished. People say there are just as many, if not more, neurons in the heart as in the brain; people talk about neurons in the intestines. Where does intelligence come from? I have not heard anyone talking about the hand having neurons.”
Richard Tuttle