Food and shelter provide basic needs, but they also feed us spiritually through their beauty and design. As you go through your week, notice where this is happening in your own life. Does your meal look delicious before you eat it? Do you enter or observe buildings or rooms that give you a certain feeling just entering or passing by? Maybe there are certain objects you use in the kitchen, or serve food on that are sentimental or handmade.
Discuss the ways in which art and ritual are linked. “Ritual” refers to a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. Consider how the consumption of food or the use of shelter is experienced in a number of prescribed steps. For instance, we might begin a meal with an appetizer, continue it with an entrée, and complete it with desert. What observations can you make about the general design of objects used for each of these parts of the meal? Likewise, how are various spaces designed for function? It can be simple but meaningful, it can be something no one else would find pleasing but you. Write about why you chose what you did and how it is part of your life. Analyze the color, shapes, textures, design, function of space (if it is a space) and how it makes you feel as a result. Take some photographs of your meal and describe how art is a part of it. Provide at least two images as examples and discuss them in your observations.
