Before you imagine me cutting up stacks of magazines, I will direct you to the concept as introduced to me by Julia Cameron in “The Artist’s Way.” While the form was indeed traditional, she prescribed the practice as a kind of meditation on the content of your life, a creation of talismans for greater creativity. Meld that with the awareness of a museum buff from childhood (having seen a Rauschenberg or a Cornell or 2 or ten in my time), there I am looking around my space and saying, “There is all this stuff, that is the content. Let me arrange that to make it meaningful and visually pleasing.”
Objects were re-grouped and lit, stacked, packed into shelves, vessels housed the tiny things. A collection of baskets became gathering points for those necessary objects whose esthetics we can’t control – mail, devices, manuals, memory disks – a unified visual front. And a moveable one.
So, when people came to the apartment, even when I thought it was a mess, they saw the personality before the chaos, or even the cats (there were always a few). And yes, if you were waiting for this, several not so small pieces of quality wall art I loved to death enclosed my “installation” in an embrace that felt like endorsement. And just maybe it was a need for THEIR approval that spurred the process.
Way too much is said about making your space better by working against who you are – being neater, cleaner, giving up things. No, we can’t all keep everything forever. But your stuff should express who you are and make you happy before anything else, otherwise, what is the point? People buy expensive objects in furniture stores to add spirit to their environment. Chances are you already have what you need stashed somewhere.
So, have fun making what is old new again, revel in your creativity, embrace the wabi-sabi of items that have been around a while, feel great about your space and save your money to get that art!
