Monday, May 01, 2006

Walls, Drawings and Adverbs

Living Room Wall Update After the initial flurry of activity, progress on the living room wall art project has slowed a bit, but it's definitely still going. I did some more work on it this weekend (compare with the previous update). I also got some unexpected assistance with it from a complete stranger who found my blog and decided to email me scans of six lovely little watercolors, which I printed out and added to the design. I was pretty tickled at that, since I figured at most a small handful of people I know would actually contribute. (Side note: This is actually the only contribution I've gotten so far, so all friends, family and acquaintances are hereby given a friendly poke in the ribs.)

As I was drawing, cutting and pasting this weekend, I also watched MirrorMask, which I now have a DVD of. I rarely buy DVDs, so take this as a very strong recommendation. I love the movie as much as the book and it relates a lot to this art project. Helena draws entire worlds from her imagination and plasters them all over her walls, and then all her adventures seem to take place inside them. The whole thing is a wonderful celebration of creativity and imagination, which is what I always want to have more of in my life.

And while we're on the subject of relating books to walls, I'll mention that I just finished reading (listening to, actually) Adverbs, by Daniel Handler. It was an interesting book, though I'd have to say that I wasn't so much in ecstasies with it to the extent that I was with Watch Your Mouth or The Basic Eight. But what I liked about it was that it was a series of short stories (all titled with an adverb intended to modify the verb "love") but they were all still connected into a unified whole. This is a general theme of things I like across various art forms. Another excellent example of it in literature would be Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. In art, perhaps Kandinsky's Small Worlds, which I saw at the NY MOMA. In music (and art) there's something like Satie's Sports et Divertissements. And in my house, there are dozens of miniature drawings, paintings, photographs, limericks, quotes and other designs all forming a mosaic on my wall. Fun stuff.

1 comment:

Jenny said...

It is fun stuff! I'm glad that I could help out, and may even think of some more things I can send along. :)