LIVING WITH ART BLOG

All of us are familiar with the disorientation that occurs when we remodel our living space or move to a new home. The things we love, including our art, are reduced to being just stuff on the floor. I recently had such an experience. Due to an unexpected water leak I had to evacuate two rooms of my house, move everything out and rip up the carpet. Books were piled waist high in the dining room and furniture was stacked in non-functional piles throughout the rest of the house.

Several days later, after the leak had finally been diagnosed and repaired, I went shopping for carpet and soon realized that having new carpet in just two rooms would, by contrast, make the decade old carpet in the rest of the house look really shabby. So, I resolved to re-carpet the entire house, upstairs and down. My exhilaration at having made such a brave decision was short lived as the person at Rug and Carpet handed me a sheet of paper which listed the things I had to do to get ready for install day. However, numbers six and seven were the real killers. They said, I should “remove all items from walls and move to a safe space” and that they “cannot be responsible for damaging anything that holds sentimental value or is fragile and/or very expensive.” Gasp, that meant all the sculptures on pedestals and almost all my paintings, drawings and photographs, a suddenly herculean project. After much wringing of hands and free-floating anxiety, I decided to hire some help.

As the art was removed from the walls and taken to the garage, I began to really notice paintings that I had been taking for granted, I began see things in certain paintings that I had not seen before. Since the art was being placed in random order, I noticed that the relationship of one painting to another began to change. I started to find works that I had not seen in years. For example, I found a box of Cameo Creation Portraits that my mother had allowed me to purchase with S & H Green Stamps that I loved dearly. The art stayed in the garage for over a week. When the new carpet had been installed and most of the furniture replaced, it was finally time to bring in the art.

As the paintings were brought back in the house, I was surprised at the happiness I felt. I started to remember the artists and the occasion of my acquiring them. They looked familiar and completely new at the same time. With this realization, I decided to look at them as if seeing them for the first time and give myself permission to assign different spaces to them. 

The large Michi Susan “Windsong” painting that has hung over my fireplace for 20 years no longer felt right in that spot. Besides, I could only see it when I walked in the room. So, I decided to hang it on the opposite wall so I would be directly looking at it when sitting in my chair. One of Michi’s Kimono paintings was hung beside a large Bavinger painting in the Dining Room, opposite a David Crismon painting.

A Skip Hill painting, “Las Meninas,” that had been living in my bedroom was rehung over an oriental desk in the entryway. “Mother,” a large painting by the late Nick Backes was left hanging above a staircase as were several Brett Weston photographs in another upstairs space. Some things were moved – some things were not, but the dialogue was different. I could see all my art in a new way. My emotional and intellectual responses to the art had changed - it was like falling in love…again.

Image - David Crimson, “Swiss Reconstruction,” Oil on Metal, 40 x 40 in.