Time for Art

My family and I took some time off to visit relatives during Easter. This included visiting my sister, Anna-Carin Mårtensson. Anna-Carin is a painter. She is about as obsessed with painting as I am with business strategy and organization. It is always fun to visit her and her family, but this time there was an extra treat:

During ten days, 2-11 April, 156 artists in southern Sweden exhibit their work. (Here is a map showing where all 156 artists are. Anna-Carin's exhibit is number 97 on the map.)


Anna-Carin had set up a large tent on the lawn of her house where she exhibited her paintings. She had also converted the living room in her house to an art gallery.

The exhibition has gone well so far. Anna-Carin's exhibition has had plenty of visitors.




Free is one of my favorites. I like the color composition. (Click the picture to see a larger version. Anna-Carin sometimes gets inspiration from her dreams. I haven't asked her if that is the case here.










This one makes me think of Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama. If you have read the book, I am sure you understand why.








Anna-Carin's taste runs to abstract painting. She is a bit of a "painter's painter". I have seen other painters jump up and down with excitement when they have studied her work. Sometimes though, she does something else entirely. This is a painting that I find very funny.






At the Foot of the Mountain is another favorite of mine. I like it as much as I like Free.








The visit was too short, but I'll go back soon. I can't draw at all, and I mostly write about business strategy and organization. And yet, when Anna-Carin paints, and I write, at some level we do it out of a similar need to explore possibilities and to express ourselves.

The exhibition lasts until the 11th of april, so there is still time to visit.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Waterfall vs. Agile: Battle of the Dunces or A Race to the Bottom?

Image
The major software methodology wars since the mid 1950’s. Someone was wrong on the Internet, so here we go… In a recent HBR article, It’s Time to End the Battle Between Waterfall and Agile , the author sets up a false premise: There is a war between Waterfall methodology and Agile. The war must end. And finally, you can combine the approaches to get the best of both worlds. This sounds good, but the article is based on a misunderstanding of both Waterfall and Agile. Also, there is no war between Waterfall methodology and Agile. There can’t be, because Waterfall methodology does not exist! Waterfall is a name for large projects that failed in the 1960’s. Waterfall was never a methodology, but a failure to apply the methodologies that existed back then. As I will show towards the end of this article, at least one of the “successful” Waterfall projects mentioned in the HBR article was neither successful, nor a Waterfall project. I got invaluable help from Alistair Cockburn. He fact che...
Read more

Performance Evaluations, Business Strategy, and Agile Methodologies

Image
It is performance evaluation time in many companies. This can be stressful, both to the people being evaluated, and the people doing the evaluation. In companies adopting agile software development methods, the tension can be extraordinary. Individual performance evaluations run counter to agile philosophy, which emphasizes team performance over individual performance. However, managers and corporate leaders need to take a few steps back, and consider the impact performance evaluations have on the organization as a whole. Especially now, in the midst of a recession, it is important to look at a companies current policies to see if they can be improved, or if they are actually holding the company back. So, how can a manager evaluate policy? Performance evaluation policies can serve as an excellent example. I'll confine myself to discussing the so-called ‘rank and yank’ methods. These are performance reviews were employees are ranked using a forced ranking system. It usually looks so...
Read more

Agile Requirements Structures, Part 1

Image
If you have worked in large Agile projects or programs, you may have noticed that there is often quite a bit of confusion about requirements, what the requirement types are, their purpose, how to write them, how to use them, and above all, what not to do with them. There are many causes for this confusion. Here are some of the more common I have seen: Nobody in the organization has read up on the requirements model it is using, so everyone makes their own interpretation. The organization deviates from a standard requirements model, but nobody knows which standard model the organization is deviating from, and/or there is no agreement about how they deviate from it. The organization has not documented its own requirements model very well. The organization mixes two or more different requirements models, often without realizing it. The organization has documented its requirements model, but finding the documentation is an epic project in itself, on par with when Henry Sta...
Read more