LIving as Art

"Living has yet to be generally recognized as one of the arts. Being born and growing up are such common experiences that people seldom consider what they involve. As most readers of books pass from cover to cover, realizing not at all that the letters which form the words are the product of painstaking craftsmanship and that the imposition of the type upon the page, the composition of the title-piece, the binding of the volume, are the result of centuries of study and design, so also we take as a matter of course the miracle of being alive, and the comings and goings of the men and women about us."

"For man is not born into a world made to fit him like a custom tailored suit of clothes, or a house built to order. He enters a universe that was eons old before his appearance, and that in all likelihood will continue for eons after his departure an infinitely complex, eternally changing universe that evolves its processes unmindful of his presence. It sets the conditions. It is man who must do the fitting."

Karl De Schweinitz

I'm a writer and I've toyed a bit with thinking of myself as a collage artist.  At a recent exhibit at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts I saw an artist who, with collage and pop-ups, created unique art books for each of her artist residencies.  And then I came across these quotes and the connection was made.  Our lives are our art and our art is filled with our lives, whether we know it or not.  

So how does one make their life a true work of art?  I suppose it could be argued that our lives are art whether we live them well and fully or not.  Still, if our lives are our magnum opus, then what does that look like?  Or, perhaps more accurately, how do I want my life to look?

I had a good life, but a small one.  It was filled with the fine details of work and home.  It was like my photographs of roses and flowers, taken on my daily walks, all of them cultivated, small bits of wildness in a world that was mostly man-made.  There was little passion in my life, except my love my love for my daughter, for my dogs.  It reminds me of the lines from the Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie, Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain : “Amelie has no boyfriend. She’s tried once or twice, but the results were a letdown. Instead, she cultivates a taste for small pleasures: dipping her hand into sacks of grain, cracking creme brulee with a teaspoon, and skipping stones at St. Martin’s canal.”  I cultivated small pleasures and I believed for many years, that was enough.  

Of course, it wasn't enough for me.  One day I came to the realization that I wanted something more.  I wanted life, something big and bold, something that would make me know every morning when I woke up and every night when I went to bed, and all the times between, that I was truly living.  I leaped from that life to something I only had a hint might be the more I hungered for.  And for the first time in a long time, I truly, truly lived.

I'm not really sure what making a life a work of art looks like but I do think there are people we can learn from.  For me, Bryan is one of those people.  He is one of the most vibrant, authentic people I know.  He paints his life in broad, bold strokes and small delicate tracings.  It's not always pretty, his life, but you feel it at a deep visceral level.  And it stays with you, long after.  It's not conscious really, his life, but instinctual, from the gut, done without plotting or planning, certainly done without a care of what others may think.  The people who love him, love him fiercely, friends for years.  My art will never be Bryan's but I think it can be grander than I thought possible, more than an exquisite miniature, but something that fills the wall and demands your attention, maybe even a second look, something gloriously me, not just a whisper.  All I have to do, is truly live it.