-Marth Stewart
The "P" word. It has followed me all my life and here's the big confession- I really thought into my late 20's, somewhere down deep, it should be sought after and could possibly be obtained. I'm a graphic designer and my work is about moving things tiny itty moves to left or right. So it's a hard one to let go of "being right" personally when professionally I spend so much time making things "look right" Then about 10 years ago I decide to take it out of my vocabulary completely. I found if I don't say it it is less likely I'll strive for it. But what replaces it? "Oh that looks so... complete on you?" "Wow that is the most whole color with your eyes". "I found the most incredibly beautiful on the planet art today on etsy?" Makes you stop and think doesn't it? Perfection is hard to replace isn't it? I love that Japan elevates the mending of broken ceramics to an art form called kintsugi. Cracks in broken pottery are carefully mended with lacquer and fine gold powder. The tea-ceremony embraces the beauty of imperfection. I picked up a book about Wabi Sabi 10 years ago and fell in love with the concept but when I went to describe it to friends it was hard to find the right words to give it justice. Got lost in Americano world. I'm getting better. Barbara Bloom's show on being broken helped. Mary Oliver helps with her poem Wild Geese. Any poem that starts with- "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees" makes me stop. So rather than resolutions for the year I like the idea of observing my relationship with a word. A word I can include in my daily conversations and thinking more often. The "I" word. Imperfection. "That looks just so... imperfect on you".
Thank you for this - a beautiful meditation on art and life. I am a long-time advocate of "rescuing" vintage pottery with imperfections or repairing beloved pottery that has suffered an accident, and either turning them around or simply displaying them as they are anyway. Just like a person, an object has a history, and to simply throw it away is to deny that the history is an integral part of its beauty.
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ReplyDeleteFor me, for the longest time, late into my teens, I really, really thought that being 'happy' was achievable as a constant state of being. It was both a shattering and liberating spasm of birth into reality --- the realization that at no point in my life would I ever be completely and consistently happy --- finally knowing that life is a balance and each moment, each experience holds the sweet AND the sour in it and neither has lesser or greater value than the other. Now I seek satisfaction, so much the richer reward for having participated in the ongoing events that make up life in a way that reflects me...