ABSTRACT
Artists and inventors rarely create something out of nothing, but rather use the components that already exist in the environment to make new things. The world is a grocery store and the artist's job is to eat the world. What is eaten, or experienced, can be transformed into sustenance, ideas, energy and action. But for this transformation to occur, it is necessary to be open enough to be stimulated by one's surroundings and sensitive enough to be altered by what is encountered there. Here the author presents six little personal snapshot stories about Virginia Woolf, Martha Graham, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Robert Wilson and Charles L. Mee. In each story the author tries to capture one way that each artist has provided her with nourishment and sustenance. The artist takes the communal ideas and associations that surround the various gods of his or her time and plays with them, inventing another story for these mythic characters.
