K.

SCOT SPARKS
Work & Statement Samples
kevinssparks@yahoo.com
859.797.0983

The Picture as Incarnate Perception

Find additional information at LinkedIn (K. Scot Sparks) and

more STUDIOLOGY work at soundcloud.com/kscotsparks

However large, pictures I make are more like studies. Studies

or sketches sometimes suggest a unique interdependence of structure
and analogy - of It-ness and Of-ness, so to speak. Maybe they
offer a conscientious escape from both overconfident and hopeless
vision. Somewhat like those of the newspapers half-tone photo,
dotty and spotty analogies here emerge partly within particular
notions of co-incidence co-operation. An experimental acting
together (both of the artists perceptual hunches AND of these in
concert with those of the viewer) allows the re-emergence of intrinsic
or embedded value - meaning. Avoiding both absolutized
arbitrariness and triumphal realism, ongoing tabulation and
adjustment - resourcefulness and self-correction sometimes allow
Reality to show itself. I hope some of these subjectivized objects will
have similar qualities - senses.

Morning Dialectic 002005 Alkyd on Masonite | 8 x 4 ft.

YOU ARE HERE TO VAGUE, VULNERABLE & DEMANDING POSSIBILITY

(ashes & dust, on emerging from the cave, and related installations)

These larger landscape improvisations are spray-paintings

atmospheres drawn with atmospheres, perhaps. I often use
pegboard masonite because its grid of miniature port holes
seems to support the pictures presence-like re-presentation,
in some unique ways. Tensions between the proverbial
window-like and wall-like (or between real and ideal epistemic
bents) are also stylized here. Through a kind of improvisation,
nature-convicted heuristics here vaguely access something
like the souls exposure (its having been marked by earlier
experiences in the land, in which seeing uniquely became
contemplation).

I attempt to find a credible place. I want to re-cognize and

receive and dwell more so than perform or demonstrate (or
escape, for that matter). Painting may become partly shareable
pilgrimage. If inclined, others might access something of this
way by considering the emergence of the compelling-ifvulnerable place-as-picture - picture-as-place. In the guise of
vague non-virtuosity, vague familiarity may surprise; it may
become relevant, with some unexpected specificity and
consistency.
Fragments about human understanding - for instance, the
Kantian epistemic grid might also pertain here - but no
less vaguely. Well apart from the nihilistic, skewed image
profiles (rectangular picture planes without right angles) and
super-low resolution might here suggest how infrequent
anything like complete knowledge is. Oddly connected to
such limitation, the land view sometimes silently nags; it
underscores the possibility of self-evident value. By no means
an argument, let alone proof such senses yet meaningfully
make late-modern orthodoxies uneasy.
The frequency with which aspects of the land view have
featured in knowledge or interpretation theory will hopefully
not limit possible associations to mere notion dropping. The
conceiving and performing of such objects suggests
investigation as to whether certain metaphoric-critical
applications the clearing (Heidegger) or the horizon
(Gadamer) might be enriched somehow, on improvisations
conjectural-concrete perception. Hopefully, compromised focus
and what technical photographers call circles of confusion
ultimately evoke not per se confusion but substantive
connection - among limit and possibility. The notion of
boundary as provisional medium (Weil) remotely parallels
that of these studies quite defuse edges between would-be
monads, whether shapes or real, space-time things.
I sometimes relate these qualities, also, to the experience of
Platonic or Gospel actors who, mid-way through the healing

from blindness, remark on how, for instance, people seem

like walking trees. Perhaps an intimacy between provision
and provisionality, revelation and dis-orientation also appears.
Objects like these pseudo-industrial, fuzzy constructs also
seem a troubled marriage, between [Rothko-esque] nonobjectivity as non-hope and, perhaps, late-Inness expectancy as
iconicity.

SOFT MEMORIAL I, B-ROLL, & INTERSECTION series

VISION AS MEMORY, DISCOVERY AS INVENTION, #s0043-0048
(looking in to look out, and vice versa) Conte on fine paper, sized near 9x12

Where the engagement of earth and sky becomes

perpendicular to that between land and water,
recognition and contemplation uniquely emerge and
merge. A substance-like glimpse of arts relational
bases and goals gets cradled unawares - in the half
transluscence. Between eye, ground plane, and halfvisual infinity, the light-haunted intersection
coincides with other crossings. Image memory whether of photos or great paintings - and memories
of one's natural/visual-environmental past often seem
to emerge by merging - relating. Whether Hebraic,
Hellenic, or proto-Taoist in style, such perceptually
saturated fields (and those they inspire) suggest a kind
of epic Memory. The confluence of these associations
with spiritually rife emotion seems as concrete as it is
fleeting as Parmenidean as it is Heracleitian. This
sense perforates my erasure sketching, in which active
absenting draws - to draw upon - [scandalous]
Presence.

Subtractive Field 0021 (charcoal and scratches - on 100% rag)

Razored Excavation - Oil-on-Panel Twilight 0042 | 14 x 26 in.

KNOWABLE UNFATHOMABLE series

(Homage, among others, to Josef Pieper)
After painting for a decade, I began to conceive of image
making as a uniquely physical seeking an intensive
excavating. I began to presume toward an undeniable
Something, via a thousand nothings - by clearing out
somewhat. Whether in regard to the horizon or the panel
before me, I was convicted: there was something to be gotten
to. Around this time, I also attempted studies somewhat as
immediate, in proto-relational (communicative) effect, as
were certain musical works Id heard, conceived, and/or
performed.
Realities like the twilighted horizon can seem to
signify very oddly as if vaguely specifically. Particularly
when reflecting on the probability that no one had ever
brain-washed me, say, as to a convicting stability of
meaning in this yet-mysterious space/place-as-vision, I
began to reflect on how sight may companion with notions
of objectivity sometimes alarming in their subject-ready
density in their value or meaning. When the sky and land
take up this counterpoint, it is as if home-like familiarity
takes on a provisional strangeness and vice versa. Where
a peculiar abundance of light is simultaneously blocked
and transmitted (as with intermittently silhouette-like and
veil-like clouds), the attentive are wooed into tacit
preoccupation with the always-important unfamiliar.
Most often, we can't quite conclude whether sunrise or
sundown is at hand in these studies. The sky's fires both
woo and warn; vast ambiguity and soulful specificity
mingle, in prayer-like engagement. Such spaces and
visions resist both per se explanation and Wittgensteinian
silence.

Sunday-Painted Scandal oil/panel, 7 x 12.5 inches

Would-be Sepia oil on panel, 3 x 4.7 ft.

Misc. study/demo samples

(Part 1 of <<20/20 MPH 0062>> performance/installation series)

Study Samples continued

selected from a manual-digital riverscape series

FORMER RORSCHACH series

we may choose to make art partly by turning selfengrossment and its emblems on their head. Here, we
make so as to open promising, window-like things. We
actively receive something of the Real, by turning
imaginations clock back and by turning sensibility to
intuitions where imagination registers Reality (and
nature as creation-stirring Creation)

TO REMEMBER:
HOLOCAUST & THE WOOING WARNING
(samples on previous page)
When I make the relevant oil-on-panel masters
(functioning 'plates' or 'negatives'), it is as if I am scraping
through the dark, looking for and then through the
proverbial tunnel - toward the Light at its end. I'd here
glimpse the peculiar spaces in and through which Light
seems to seek the seeker. Somehow, these visions seem to
balance through an acknowledging of the convulsive - to
achieve the placid by refusing to evade the provisionally
harrowing...

AMALGAM - iphone studies & spray-painted excavations

(samples of 100 studies - for ink-on-mylar mural)

TO THE MICRO-HOLOCAUST: SUBJECTS VERBOTEN

For those struggling with problems of form, meaning, and
their possible relation (and for those actively curious both about
possible reconciliations of fact and value AND regarding issues of
power), this referent holds something as non-negligible as it is
verboten. Here I use a subtractive (erasing/razoring) approach to
oil-on-panel painting in order to reconsider how recognition and
redirection relate to working toward the Light.
I tend to paint until I can 'believe' the resulting image;
typically, embarrassing mistakes and messes transpire for three
fourths of the process. In the past, I would typically name similar
images as these with the phrase Darkness attempts to comprehend
Light 0043. One meditation that accompanies my process regards
the radical re-contextualizing of [thereby dissonant] life drawing
and proportional concerns. Classicism intermittently becomes
absurd alongside the harrowing if efficacious stylization that is,
alongside the distortion that is part and parcel of all diabolical
treatments of the ever controverted Imago Dei.

SCANDAL ON SCANDAL (SUBJECTS VERBOTEN 0042)

Sam Eden Commission

Installation series of subtractive oil-on-panel

paintings - between 50 x 30 and 18 x 6 inches

Found Subject, Offense [Verboten 0050-0053] J. James, ATS, & Eden Collections

Abbreviated Philosophy of Teaching

As an artist-teacher, I join students in experimentally considering
how particular facts and values connect to make sensate or selfevident meaning. Whether in beginning, intermediate, or advanced
studios - participants develop by imaginatively integrating objective
and subjective thought. Through Socratic critiques, investigations
are guided toward greater perceptual, manual, and poetic
effectiveness. These conversations encourage whole-person
engagements, where all potentials including individuality are
actively discovered and cultivated. Whether in mimetic or nonobjective styles, increasingly insightful sight is gradually made
manifest - in increasingly particular and compelling integrations, of
sound proportion and analogy. Given the variety of personalities
across a cohort, related works are of significant variety, in terms of
process, product, and presentation.
Students often develop a healthily personal sense of techniques
interpretive role. The first half of introductory and intermediate
studios is weighted toward a gentle correcting of perceptual
pathologies or unhelpful if half-conscious assumptions and, then,
toward an experimental discovery of flexible but helpful principles.
Some random aspects are seen as affording a richness not otherwise
known; less meaningful arbitrariness is challenged through projects
where subjects, materials, and processes are strategically integrated
with a view to communicative implication (as informed by cultural
traditions, strong intuitions, and reasonably informed arguments).
Form and meaning are related beyond simple or automatic one-toone correspondences. Less communicative modes generic design
solutions, goal-less processes (and more slavish illusionism) are
graciously challenged in light of arts/persons great potential possibility.
Course topics are presented in progressing repetitions that
interact with a range of experimentally prioritized perspectives. In
reviewing histories and artifacts, students are encouraged to
simultaneously note both authentic distinctness and important
continuity. Holistic perspectives are developed without undue
generalism. In both studio and critique, a freeing symmetry between each ones intrinsic interdisciplinarity and realitys
multifaceted whole - is gradually discovered. This often goes forth
through projects analytic as they are imaginative - and vice versa.

All kinds of students regularly demonstrate that authentic art and

transformative learning develop significantly where a kind of
personal fullness gradually responds to lifes abundant if tacit
connections. Overly absolute reductions, and undue [abdicating]
relativisms both of which neutralize both art and learning are
winsomely resisted. Students learn to invest evident strengths while
strategically addressing weaker areas. Quite often, potentials are
discovered to be as significant as they are latent.
+The cultivation of unexpected verbal skills has consistently had dramatic

impacts on the perceptual-creative growth of my students. This might be

expected, given arts hermeneutic-linguistic bases. Students develop insightful
sight, in part, by carefully marking and describing important differences
(including, among others, that between simplicity and simplistic-ness) in the
context of an authentic and rich relatedness. Conveniently mis-applied notions,
such as might be typical with Occhams razor, are somewhat qualified here, in
the spirit of Einsteins adaptation: Everything should be communicated as
simply as possible and no simpler. Appropriately specific language is
encouraged as a way of refining poetic vision; the latter refines perceptualmanual technique. This baby is not thrown out with the bathwater of
unnecessary jargon. Importantly, students who were formerly prone to pigeonhole themselves as not verbal are liberated to discover and apply the deep
connection between careful seeing, thinking, and communicating. In this process,
they are released from unnecessary fears and drawn toward the rich integration
of intellect, feeling, and value. As a related strategy toward developing the
student-artist and her/his sensibility, elements of familiar binaries are considered
in terms of their latent mutuality (and beyond simple contrast-based notions).
Sets like depth and breadth, real and ideal, literal and figurative,
quantitative and qualitative, and theory and practice would only be a
sampling here. Interestingly, careful parsing and integrating importantly -and
repeatedly- parallel that taken up in regard to visual-poetic parameters (i.e.,
variations and relations suggested as spectrums of possibility between figure
and ground, light and shadow, space and form, mass and shape,
temperature and saturation, contour and edge, intent and response and
form and content). The careful extending, refining, reconciling, and
integrating of these has often entailed important, distinct reconcilings of left
and right brain, sight with insight, intent and content, and without simplisticness fact with value.

STUDENT WORK SAMPLES

Below is a small sampling of studies, journal items, and
works from one program sequence (across two or three
generational cohorts). Samples from Design, Drawing,
Color Theory, Figure/Life Drawing, Photography, Painting,
alternative media, and semester-long [medium/strategyselective] Dependent Studies courses are featured.
FOUNDATIONS
Developmental intensives on [developmental] two-dimensional
composition We here address imaginative-objective vision and
both possible interactions and implications (amidst designs
subjective-objective necessity).
Engagements are filtered through an increasingly conscious [1]
varying and [2] well-varied relating of line, shape, contour, edge,
value, relative opacity. Proportion, general position [shape
location], frontal/axis-based positioning, and facet/perspective
positioning are also studied; these are developed as useful
concepts that expand imagination while ensuring different kinds of
variety, including that related to appropriate and expressive
solutions to compelling problems. Here we develop an ability to
imagine and create compelling visual wholes largely through
analysis. Among other things, the possible intimacy of qualification
and quantification becomes fascinating and effectual.

STUDENT WORK SAMPLES | Drawing

COLOR
THEORY
surveys
and
experiments
with
ideas/phenomena that contribute to the recognizing and
flexible categorizing of colors, their possible relations, and
their effects. Naming, comparing, measuring, imagining,
attempting, and systematizing around phenomena like
simultaneous contrast and the three dimensions of color
often constitute this helpful investment. Related issues and
problems are studied carefully, through Albers and Gage,
among others. As one unit example, the above are photos of
manually analyzed and mixed digitizations, featuring historic
paintings and natural topics.

Studies herein suggest a good cross-section and

relative successes from different kinds and levels of
students, surely with significantly different backgrounds
and initial study tendencies.

sculpture / applied design / glass work /digital imaging

DIRECTED STUDIES
Each image or set represents a completed and welldefended body of work, exhibited in Junior and Senior
years.

Paper Still Life/ watercolor

Early stage painting studies :

pure form / found still life / oil-on-pape

Former Student Commentary

. . . the attention I received under Professor Sparks was unmatched in any of my
other studies . . . Shortly after graduation I moved to New York City to pursue a
career in photography. For the past eleven years Ive been doing just that and making
a living as a working artist. The training and guidance I received studying under
Kevin prepared me for the competitive world of commercial and fine art photography
. . . I can truly say that I would not be where I am today if not for Kevin Sparks . . .
~ Todd Boebel, professional photographer (New York City)
. . . I don't know that I have ever been privileged to meet an individual as
extraordinarily gifted as Kevin. His formidable command of the visual arts
complements a wide-ranging intellect that thrives in the environment of
interdisciplinary exchange. He combines academic prowess with exceptional creative
abilities and a remarkable gift for service that grows from his deep sense of >>>
human value. He is a uniquely talented individual and a model of liberal arts
learning in the noblest sense of it . . .
. . . Kevin recognized my need for a mentor and extended himself selflessly to me. Our
mutual interests, such as music, visual arts, literature, and philosophy, became the
context for our friendship . . . Mine is not the only life Kevin has blessed in this way.
From my days as a student, I have witnessed him reach out similarly to countless
individuals. I am humbled by the sincerity of his interest in others, the range of people
he is able to reach, his persistent efforts to find ways to help that are appropriate to
the individual instead of formulaic, and by his commitment to maintain the
connections he establishes . . . I have considered myself a pupil of his for many years . .
. I wrote my Master's thesis in the English Department at UNC Chapel Hill on the

color films of Michelangelo Antonioni, consulting heavily with Kevin to help me

contextualize the work of this intensely visual thinker . . .
~ Todd C. Stabley, multimedia specialist, Duke Capture, Duke University
. . . Im still glowing over the fact that I was offered the full scholarship to SUNY . . .
Thank you for the vast amounts of knowledge . . . for your wisdom: a critical mindset.
What a blessing to have studied with you for three years! . . . thank you for building
me up . . .
. . . Professor Sparks developed in all of us a vocabulary that, in hindsight, was
invaluable. Since graduating, the topic of our preparedness for graduate study has
come up numerous times . . .
~ Kate Diago, B. A. in Studio Art (Painting),
M. F. A. (SUNY), award-winning installation artist
. . . Kevin Sparks was my advisor while an undergraduate. I had four studio courses
with him and two directed studies. His provocative teaching served as the nucleus of
my artistry. He persistently challenged my work and the admixture of my philosophy,
faith, sensibility, and memory essentially, the ingredients of my art-making. Three
years after exiting his formal tutelage, he continues to mentor me, guiding,
challenging, and encouraging me as an artist and as a person . . . Kevin Sparks is
quintessentially the difficult but markedly great professor the most influential
teacher I have had . . .
~ Amber Hares, B. A. in Studio Art (Photography), M. F. A. (Rochester Institute),
mixed media artist
. . . My relationship with the good professor is of the quality that I can describe
confidently as being pivotal for the rest of my life. He has, by himself, stretched not
only my capabilities but also my mind . . . My freshman year, Prof. Sparks took me
under his wing . . . through his counsel, I have developed a deep hunger for
philosophy and theology. His teaching has helped me take all of my studies seriously. I
could go on and on about how this man has changed my life . . .
~ Daniel Werner, Studio Art Major (Painting), Philosophy Minor
. . . I recall meeting Prof. Sparks eight years ago, seeking his opinion on a handful
of rather timid sketches. Despite my minimal experience with painting at the time,
Prof. Sparkss genuine belief in human potentials (including my own) gave me the
courage to pursue the studio art major and to present nearly seventy oil paintings at
my senior exhibition three years later. His unique approach of combining intensive
studio experimentation with philosophical inquiry has been invaluable. By the time of
my senior exhibition (seventy substantive oil paintings on panel), I was accepted to
several graduate programs, including the Art Institute of Chicago. My assisting with
research for his text on painting and hermeneutics has prepared me well for graduate
work in religion and the arts.
~ Yuliya Tsutserova, B. A. in Studio Art, full fellowship recipient/
PhD candidate, Religion and Literature - University of Chicago

. . . I just wanted to drop a line to say thank you for all you did over my
undergraduate career. I really appreciate the way you always expected the best from
us. You never accepted mediocrity. I will never look at the world the same way again.
Thank you for your commitment to excellence . . . you are the best instructor because
of this. Thanks for striving for excellence in your life just as you wanted us to strive for
it ourselves . . . ~ Heather Sontag, mother, artist, and automobile racer!
. . . Professor Sparks pushes his students to push themselves . . . [He] teaches his
students to think, to reach farther, to look beyond . . . I owe him so much in terms of
spiritual, artistic, and philosophical growth, its ridiculous! . . .
~ Laura McNeel, Studio Art Major (Painting)
. . . I would like to thank you for all you have given me over these past two years.
Indeed, you have given much . . . you have been an incredible teacher, as you have not
only imparted knowledge about art but also knowledge about being a thinker . . . I
praise God that he would take me to Kentucky, USA to enjoy such a rare gift. I realize
the time, energy (and more) I have cost you. I fully respect the advisor, director,
professor and person you have been and still are in my life. THANK YOU for
teaching me in love, patience, and honesty, and for expecting and believing in me
more than I dared. Allow me to attach applicable fragments from Mertons The Seven
Storey Mountain (pp. 154-155):
. . . [They] purified and educated the perceptions of their students by
teaching them how to read a book and how to tell a good book from a
bad . . . they brought things out of you, they made your mind produce
its own explicit ideas . . . [He posesses] the gift of communicating to
them something of his own vital interest in things, something of his
manner of approach . . . his vocation, in return, perfects and ennobles
him. And that is the way it should be, even in the natural order: how
much more so in grace! Providence was using him as an instrument
more directly than he realized [in] preparing my mind . . .
~ Shalimar Preuss, award-winning filmmaker, Paris
. . . Professor Sparks impressed me as that all-too-rare of individuals . . . [he]
challenges students to investigate their habits of thought, inspires their creativity, and
launches them towards a new mindfulness . . . Since graduating, I have been involved
in fully-funded graduate study at Indiana University (MFA, 97), Stanford University
(Stegner Fellowship and Marsh McCall Lectureship, 99-04), and SUNY Albany
(PhD student and Presidential Fellow, current). I can say with absolute clarity that
my interaction with Professor Sparks comprised my most important preparation for
graduate study . . .
~ Angela Pneuman, award-winning author

 . . . in addition to being exceptionally knowledgeable in matters of art, philosophy,

and theology, Kevin has a passion for teaching . . . In my remaining time as an
undergraduate, I saw even more evidence of Kevins selflessness and generosity as he
continued to invest his personal time and energy into me, one who was never
officially a student of his, but a student in the truest sense nonetheless . . . I am now
two and half years into a PhD program at Boston College, and Kevin has continued
to be a source of steady encouragement as well as a continuing exemplar of what it
means to live a life that is reflective yet ardent . . . Additionally, when I began
teaching here at Boston College as part of my graduate program, and I asked Kevin
for any advice that he might give, his counsel proved to be a wealth of wisdom that,
after a year and half, I am still learning to put into practice. Furthermore, the
manner in which he spoke to me about teaching revealed an intense devotion to his
own students and an unwavering commitment to the rigorous demands of an educator
who is dedicated to seeing profound changes take place in those students . . . On the
whole, I think it is fair to say that I will probably never fully realize the extent to
which Kevin has contributed to my own development . . .
~ John Burmeister, B. A. and M. A. in Philosophy, PhD. Philosophy/Instructor of
Philosophy - Boston College
. . . He has gone the extra mile time and time again whether meeting with me
outside of class or maintaining an e-dialogue . . . sometimes his lectures are so
inspiring, its all I can do to hold back tears of joy . . .
~ Richard Larison, Philosophy Major, Studio Art Minor
(Digital Media, Film & Master Reproduction)
. . . Professor Sparks has become, for me, an excellent role model for what an
instructor is called to be. Within my own teaching, I hope to mirror the time, energy,
and love that he consistently pours into the lives of his students. He is well-studied,
articulate, and passionate about art and the transformations possible therein. His
instruction varies from semester to semester as he anticipates and recognizes the
specific learning needs of the individuals within each class. He seeks to make this
intentional method of instruction relevant to our art making, as well as to our lives in
general . . . the class-wide dialogues he establishes and maintains within as well as
outside of the classroom have developed not only my understanding and appreciation
of art but also of music, art history, my relationships, learning, questioning, and my
teaching . . . he has made every effort to be available for any instruction I have
needed or wanted outside of class . . . his critiques have been consistently constructive,
dignifying, and properly challenging. Professor Sparks encouragement and
instruction has transformed the way I make art, think, and ultimately, live. Through
his example, I am learning of the delight and joy found within living in a holistic and
full manner . . .
~ Marta Irvine, B. S. in Art Education, drawer-naturalist

ABRIDGED BIO
Born and raised in northern New Jersey- Sparks studied liberal and
visual arts as an undergraduate and obtained the three-year terminal degree,
an M.F.A in Drawing and Painting the latter, from the University of
Tennessee. He has variously exhibited and taught largely within liberal arts,
interdisciplinary higher education. In addition to his regular exhibiting,
performing, and teaching schedule - the latter ultimately covering all
foundations, theory, and media/studios - he has tutored in instrumental
music, philosophy, and music production as well as led a number of
interdisciplinary seminars (interdisciplinary honors seminars, seminars on
critical thinking for medical professionals, seminars on aesthetics, music
criticism & production seminars, and seminars on creativity and problem
solving, for scholars in business & management).
Often, Sparks has presented on the studios heuristic hermeneutics trial & error interpretation in which real finding and real innovation merge.
Interests here largely pertain to phenomena that marry invention as
responsive discovery and productive, real-world contemplation (each as
persistently concrete and relational). Relevant researches and comments are
integrated, among others, in the forthcoming essays Wondering Toward
Incarnate Perception: On Painting & Intrinsic [AND relationally-contingent]
Value, The Studio as Philosophy Lab: Painting, Difference, Possibility, and
Meaning and Why[/How] Art Can be Taught: A Response to Elkins.
A Vento brass instrument endorsee, Sparks is also a liturgical,
chamber, and jazz trumpet player as well as a composer-producer in different
genres. Often working as an inter-media installation artist, Sparks midi
sketches and models (including music for short films) can be sampled at
soundcloud.com/kscotsparks . Having carefully taught most age and
developmental levels, from classical kinder to grad school, he has also
developed the HIGHER YEARNING and STUDIOLOGY curricula in which
critical thinking is winsomely taught as an unusually compelling way of
embarking on visual and musical arts mastery. Among other things, each
participant discovers how each of these are 'basic personal languages,' that
each may daily, actively cultivate - to great intrinsic and practical value.
Sparks has variously exhibited, performed, lectured, researched, and/or
recorded in - among others - Prague, Nairobi, Edinburgh, New York,
Athens, Dresden, Mombasa, Marthas Vineyard, Brno, Paris, Budapest,
London, Dresden, Boston, Pergamon, and Addis-Ababa...