Everywhere I turn, I see dead birds. Last week I found a dead Finch with a flash of yellow feathers flat on its back in our garden. I buried it under a pile of periwinkle. And this week, I’ve seen three pigeons –– rats of the sky –– splat on the sidewalk among the early Autumn leaves. Are they an omen? A reminder to get a pap smear? Wait, when does my passport expire? Anyway, I’ve been thinking about birds and along came Isobel Harvey and her gorgeous feathered friends. Harvey’s birds are very much alive. Her style is exuberant and childlike (I can see her paintings illustrating a kid’s book of nordic myths) and there really isn’t a painting of hers I wouldn’t hang in my house.
Noriko Kuresumi’s ceramic sculptures remind me of breaking waves. Makes sense given the artist’s fascination with the ocean and sea life. I also see ruffled fabric and spilt milk. “Don’t cry over it,” my Mum used to say. Spilt Milk, that is. Move forward. I find Kuresemi’s work vital and exquisite. She works in porcelain –– translucent and strong –– and she’s never taken a sculpture class in her life. Wow.
The first (and only) time I sat down at a potter’s wheel my fingernails were painted a vermillion red. “Those won’t last very long,” is all my teacher said as my hands scrambled to centre the lump of wet clay enlarging before me. I’ve since learned that a manicure is wasted on a potter’s hands. Too much water, too much mud. I cut my nails short, and once in a while, I slap on some Egyptian Magic. That’s my manicure. I like my hands. They’re weathered from the sun and from washing dishes and bathing babies and dipping sponges in clay water. They’re weathered from planting marigolds in the summer (to keep away the squirrels) and forgetting to wear gloves in the winter. I like these photographs of makers’ hands by Marilyn Lamoreux. Drafting, drawing, painting, weaving. There’s toughness and tenderness in each image.
A few weeks ago, I brought home a piece of pottery from an artist whose work I’ve long admired. it’s a little blob of a chalice with rough edges and a gloopy glaze that makes it look like it was sculpted from melted marshmallow. “I’m a sloppy potter,” Paula said as I tuned over the vase to reveal an unfinished join and moon face base. “My work lacks integrity,” she added in a way that made zero apology for her lumpy rim and lopsided base. For someone who works painstakingly to smooth her joins, lumps and bumps, Paula’s attitude both inspires and infuriates me. My nine-year-old daughter brings home more polished work. And there it is. The child. That’s what I see. That’s what I am drawn to in Paula Grief‘s work and what I connect to in most art I like. A childlike sense of play and freedom and imagination. Clean joins and finished edges mean nothing in the absence of these key elements. Not caring about what other people think is the game changer. Paula doesn’t give a toss about appealing to a wide audience. “I make things that I think my friends will like.” Sounds like creative integrity to me.
Boredom opens channels. We know that. But only after we’ve swum in some rather turbid waters. Time is so drawn out when we’re bored. The German word for boredom invites us to take the time to understand where our boredom comes from, to swim in the waters. Langeweile. “Lange” means long and “weile” means a while. As I watch our children amble through late June and July –– restless, agitated, lazy –– I realize that unlike them, I never experienced the hot and sticky ennui of summer boredom. I was always surrounded by cousins and grandparents and friends. If I wasn’t learning to sail, I was collecting urchin shells or playing bingo or watching Vougiouklaki films under a hot Athens sky. My childhood summers were idyllic and action packed. This year, summer for our children is a mix of part time jobs, city camps, overnight camp and plenty of boredom. I know they’re at peak boredom when they’d sooner lay on the cool kitchen floor and stare languidly at the ceiling than walk to the ice cream parlour up the street. Our eldest child has worn the same old concert t-shirt everyday this week despite mounds of clean options on her bedroom floor. “I’ll put my clothes away tomorrow,” she’s been saying since June. There’s been so much boredom in our home this summer that at times I fear we might drown in it. Lanegweile. Or maybe it’s just me who’s bored, or more specifically, wrestling with my boredom and projecting my frustrations on to my family? Is it a creative rut? is it the heat? The endless cycles on the dishwasher. The stillnesss of our street. Is it that socialite writer, Derek Blasberg posting shiny pictures on Instagram from our beloved Folegandros? Comparison really is the killer of all joy. And as it happens, a fast track to boredom. But then I watch our son throw tennis balls against a brick wall in the parking lot behind our house and marvel at how utterly absorbed he is in the mindless repetition of it all. Or notice that every chair in our kitchen has turned into a makeshift loom for our youngest child who weaves half a dozen bracelets a day. And when not not putting her clothes away, I see that our daughter morphs from slovenly teenager to Marie Kondo. What I observe in all three children is how boredom, when given room, turns into an urge to do. To tidy, to weave, to throw a ball at a wall. My husband takes to the garden when he’s bored. Or makes a bolognese sauce. He’s a do-er. As Adam Gopnik writes in All That Happiness Is, “genuine happiness is always rooted in absorption in something outside us and begins in accomplishment undertaken for its own sake and pursued to its own odd and buzzing ends.” I know this to be true when I’m absorbed in clay or in the rhythm of my body’s strokes underwater. It’s a heavenly state to be in. It comes and it goes. It’s not something we can hold on to or force into action. And so, I’m surrendering to the boredom, to noticing what I notice. As graphic designer, Ellen Parr says, “the cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
Two years ago I moved a withering orange tree –– a gift from my mother in law –– into a fresh pot, gave it fertilizer, water and sunlight and watched nature do what it so miraculously does; recover. As with any meaningful recovery, it took time for the orange tree to heal from the trauma of being moved outside –– to a weekend of thunderstorms and scorching sun –– with no warning. Acid yellow leaves turned a verdant green, and within six months, half a dozen plump oranges sprang from its robust branches. This morning, my friend, Josephine came over to assist with a second transplant. The tree had outgrown its pot and needed a much larger home. Joe was a teacher for many years, and as such has a way of instilling confidence in a person so that they feel they can take on the task themselves. We used my bread knife to loosen the tree from its original digs and Joe stood alongside me as I moved the tree and packed it in with fresh potting soil. I was convinced that the new pot would be too big, but it’s actually not. It’s hard to know what a plant might need in the future –– what any of us might need in the future –– when we’re so intensely immersed in the here and now. This felt good, though. Planning ahead. Creating a home that my tree can grow into.
Our home is littered with things that were once one thing and then became another; a giant school ruler that became a shelf, a metal lamp shade that became a fruit bowl, a banged up old bicycle wheel that an artist friend turned into a wall hanging that resembles a bus. I love this idea that a person, and a thing can have many incarnations. (I hope to come back as a blade of grass.) British artist, Chris Kenny works with common place materials and turns them into poignant, and often humorous works of art. His twig series is so brilliant and weird. Tiny, delicate twigs re-imagined as stick figures dancing, stretching, jumping, pulling. There’s so much humour and pathos packed into each one.
I was combing through the dresses in my wardrobe last week when I suddenly realized that I’ll never wear them again. A gingham slip dress, a Schiaparelli pink sheath, black frocks in organza, chiffon and moiré silk. There’s the lemon yellow vintage cocktail dress that I wore the night before I got married. I always meant to wear that one again. And the floor length Missoni, with its endless zig zag stripes that I wore with matching four inch stilettos to a dear friend’s wedding. And a tulle filled frock covered in cherry blossoms that my friend, Stephanie loaned me back when our waists were smaller and boobs perkier. I’ve had these dresses for twenty years, some even longer, and up until recently I’ve looked to that portion of my wardrobe as a place that I’ll return to when …. When what? When I feel the verve to wear the kind of outfit that turns heads, the kind of outfit that pairs well with dancing and witty repartee. Someone draw me a bath –– I’m tired just thinking about it. What I realized the other day as I searched for something to wear to a neighbourhood fête is how dated the “party” portion of my wardrobe is. For starters, most of my dresses don’t fit anymore. Not my body, nor my style. Fashion has always been a form of creative expression, and these clothes are no longer representative of who I am and what I want to express. A few years, a few big years, can change the way we dress. Change the way we think, look and feel. While I rarely go to parties anymore, I still want to up the ante when the urge strikes, and I still want to be able to draw from a pool of clothes that take me out of myself while feeling myself. That’s what a great party dress does. I’m not ready for linen tunics or the lilac cocktail suit yet, but I also don’t want my wardrobe to be a momento mori of a past life. It’s time to clear it out and make space for, I don’t know what.
My earliest images of mother and child are the Orthodox Christian icons that I grew up around. I was drawn in by the colours –– vermillion, indigo and lapis lazuli –– and the shimmering of gold leaf. Once I was in high school, I studied art history and my visual references expanded to include Mary Cassat’s tender portraits, Henry Moore’s curvaceous sculptures and the hand carved wood figures of the Yoruba people. The darker side of motherhood –– The anguish, the heartache, the loss –– came in much later by way of Louise Bourgeois’ red gouache drawings and the harrowing self portraits of Frida Kahlo. We look to art to feel connection, to find meaning, to feel less alone in the world. Two artists whose exploration of motherhood resonates with me today are Lisa Sorgini and Madeline Donahue. Although I’m beyond the stage where my babies are glued to my body like mussels on wet rock, I still have a visceral response to Sorgini’s closeups of tiny hands gripping hold of their mother’s fleshy bellies, and multiple children hanging off multiple limbs. Cesarean scars. Swollen nipples. Baby’s bottom or woman’s breast? It’s hard to tell sometimes. Her breathtaking images are all skin and sweat and shadows. Madeline Donahue captures a similar tenderness and intensity in her brightly coloured depictions of everyday life. One image shows a mother painting the window sill while one child crawls at her feet and the other uses the hem of her dress as a swing. It’s distance from that phase of motherhood that allows me such a full and free and visceral connection to it.
I realized this morning as I wandered through Mount Pleasant Cemetery how much I’ve come to appreciate cemeteries. As a child I used to hold my breath whenever a cemetery was in sight. The very idea that some wayward spirit might follow me home was reason enough to steer clear of them for good. Superstitious thinking can wreak havoc on a child’s imagination. When my Nanna died, a woman I adored, my Dad suggested I stayed in the car during the burial service. I remember chatting to the limo driver and thinking that whatever was happening at the bottom of the hill was not for children. Cemeteries were not for children. My own kids have shown me that children don’t need as much protecting as we think they do. At their great-grandmother’s wake all three of my kids commented on how lovely her outfit was. They greeted Nonnina in her casket much like they would have greeted her in her kitchen. Bright green lawns, which her cemetery has acres of are a lovely playing ground for children. Death is part of life and life is part of death. Over the years I’ve come to see cemeteries as a place where death and life intersect. Cemeteries can and should be community destinations, much like they were before we had art galleries, parks and concert halls to congregate in. When we visited my stepfather recently at the beautiful Brompton Cemetery in London, I was happy to see how vibrant and alive the cemetery is. There’s even a cafe where people commune for English breakfasts or a jolt of coffee while visiting a loved one or cycling to work. My brother meets clients at the cafe from time to time because the cemetery is so centrally located. Lime trees, wildflowers, foxes, birds and bats all live there. Dogs bark. Humans weep. Bicycle bells tinkle. There is so much life in Ukulu‘s cemetery. On my walk this morning, I came across dozens of flat headstones blanketed in cherry blossom petals and dappled light. It was as if nature herself was celebrating the lives beneath the soil.
