Art versus science

Quality is achieved though combining
classical and romantic knowledge.

A couple of years ago I met a commercial concrete contractor who was considering whether to start a decorative concrete crew. He had been subbing out any decorative work that came along with his jobs, but he just hated having to pay someone else to do work that in his mind looked easy. And yet he knew that he couldn’t ask his current workers to do decorative work. “They don’t have the personality for it,” he said. “They’re used to putting down 20,000 square feet of floor a day, not screwing around with some silly, artsy kind of stuff.”

Last I heard, he still hadn’t started a decorative crew. I don’t think he has the personality for it either. But for most of you who are doing decorative work, the appeal is exactly what turns off the production guys. It’s the combining of creativity with technical skills and knowledge that makes it fun and rewarding.

I think that’s what has attracted such a diverse group of people to decorative concrete. I’ve met artists, engineers, interior decorators, lawyers, advertising executives, doctors, and even concrete finishers, who are now committed to decorative concrete. All this is creating an extraordinarily vibrant industry, one that’s a lot of fun to be around. Not that I don’t still like commercial concrete construction, but if you go to an ACI meeting and sit through another lecture on punching shear (and manage to stay awake) you’ll know what I mean.

One of my favorite books is “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” In it, author Robert Pirsig devotes a lot of pages to the conflict between classical knowledge (engineering and science) and romantic knowledge (art and intuition) and shows that to reach true quality in our life and our work we need both. Anything, whether it’s a motorcycle or a concrete slab, that has only technical perfection is lifeless; if it has only art, then it doesn’t work as intended. Decorative concrete especially needs both science and art to achieve the kind of quality our customers expect. If you have the technical knowledge then free your inner creativity; if you’re an artist, learn the science of concrete.