Landscape in Motion

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Art for Housewives

Recently I posted about making picture frames from paperback books. And here’s my first experiment.

The book frame is small, c.10.5 X 15 cm. There’s still much retouching to do but it’s a quick and easy project. And I have many outdated manuals that would make great frames.

So now that our dining room table has become my playground, I will try experimenting with cardboard food trays, too. Since covid, there’s much more food packaging to dispose of. And THIS foto is a good example of how these cardboard trays can be used.

For more CARDBOARD FRAMES: see my Pinterest board showing cardboard frames

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Playground

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Art for Housewives

Καλό Μήνα

My brain won’t shut up. The world around me is making me scream and blah-blah-blah all day long. There’s only one way to get my brain to shut up and that’s to make something. Because the focused attention needed when working with my hands makes me feel like I am meditating and mellowing out. Once the hands are in motion, the mind has no choice but to follow.

Play is important for adults. It helps keep the mind flexible, stimulates creativity, and facilitates the growth of brain cells. But what I’m looking for today is that magical explosion of endorphins released when playing.

The imagination is a playground.

I want to play and not commit myself to a long term project making a book frame seems like a good idea.

I have several outdated paperback manuals that are waiting to be transformed into picture frames. It’s easier to carve out the book if the outer edges are glued together. Once the pages are eliminated, the frames edges can be smoothed out with papier-mâché and strips of cardboard can better define the frame.

I don’t worry much about precision because I’m playing plus the older I get, the more of an Abstract Expressionist I become.

Related: CARDBOARD FRAMES: see my Pinterest board showing cardboard frames + Why not make something? + In Praise of Hands + The Case For Working With Your Hands + Diane Stavros and IN PRAISE OF HANDS: Knit yourself well. + cardboardyness +

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Drifters

Posted on February 8, 2023 by Art for Housewives

It’s nice to have a special place that can make you feel magical and safe. My special place is our terrace.

Volver and Sasha are at ease here, too. Sasha helps care for the plants when we’re away whereas Volver, the king, spends much time on the terrace chewing lemongrass, hunting lizards, and, above all, napping.

The minute you occupy a space, you transform it just as  it transforms you, too. Psychogeography, the study of how the geographical environment influences one’s thoughts and behaviour, was invented by Situationist Guy Dubord in 1955. Dubord suggested that we should explore the specific effects of the geographical environment by drifting. That is, the practice of walking around urban spaces as did writer and flâneur Charles Baudelaire. “It is not given to everyone to be able to bathe in the multitude: enjoyment of the crowd is an art,” says Baudelaire, and “the solitary and thoughtful stroller derives a singular intoxication from this universal communion.”

Inevitably the voyeur becomes entangled with that which he observes. That’s why I like looking at flowers.

Related: Psychogeography: A Purposeful Drift Through the City + Theory of the Dérive +

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Parking Party

Posted on February 4, 2023 by Art for Housewives

A neighbor had a birthday party for his daughter in our parking niche. He didn’t ask to use it nor did he even bother to invite us. Initially it really irritated me. Then I watched the children playing and laughing and eating cake and singing Happy Birthday.

Some parents, hopefully, took fotos because it pleases me to think that years from now a grown up little girl will look at her childhood fotos and see those with our parking niche as the stage.

How lovely to be part of someone’s childhood memories.

Your childhood follows you wherever you go.

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Tulips and Hats

Posted on February 2, 2023 by Art for Housewives

That year they’d decided on fondue for Christmas lunch. But before dunking their forks into the bubbling hot cheese, they put their hats on and danced around the tulips. It made them feel silly and delightfully dizzy and like children again. Because Christmas is for kids, they decided to play.

Meanings are mobile and change when necessary. The meaning of Christmas is an example. It does not remain static but changes as we change. The meaning of Christmas for a child is not that of an adult.

Viktor Frankl spent three years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. Like Freud, he was from Vienna and had studied psychology. Frankl understood that to survive he needed to give his life meaning regardless as to the situation. Once freed, Frankl wrote a book Man’s Search for Meaning and how this meaning influences the way we live.

Three things, he wrote, were necessary to give meaning to one’s life even in a concentration camp. First of all it was important to give yourself a purpose such as having a project then give yourself pleasure by actualizing it.  Appreciation and gratitude are also important in creating meaning as is the ability to adapt.

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