General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Friday Afternoon Challenge for your beautiful minds: The Art of the Altarpiece! Part I. [View all]calimary
(81,210 posts)I'm a firm believer that EVERYONE has some kinda art in them. You just have to find the correct or best-fitting expression of it. ANYTHING can become an artists' medium. Found objects. Paint and brushes. Chisels and hammers. Sand. Paper and plastic cups. Glass. Globs of tar. Paper and cardboard. Rocks and pebbles - GEEZ don't get me started on rocks...
There's some middle-aged guy in our neighborhood who has taken it upon himself to create gardens in the dirt and cracked sidewalk areas around some of the older trees skirting the local post office. There was one patch of dirt where a tree had been taken out and just left. Other stuff was overgrowing, kinda ratty-looking, along the chain-link fence between the post office and a parking lot. So this guy decides to take that neglected area - where assholes had littered and dropped cigarette butts and wrappers and tree roots had broken through the surface and rag-tag weeds were sprouting here and there - and transformed it! I was just there this morning, walking my dog - and it's just so damn NICE!!!
He had designed these little gardens within that neglected space. Geraniums were growing. Scraps of colored and printed cloth were glued to the curbsides, turning them into interesting little bits of beauty. Succulents were tucked in here and there. A discarded pair of child's slippers were arranged together near clumps of "hens & chickens" and Indian Paintbrushes. He brings a couple of empty two-gallon milk jugs with him that are full of water and he probably takes more from the water fountain in the nearby dog park, and he waters his little garden beds, and they're flourishing! One little bed is "framed" with dozens of colorful plastic milk jug lids, like little teeny pavers or mosaic pieces inlaid into the dirt. Another little bed is outlined by carefully-arranged clouds of dryer lint. Another little bed is lined with pine cones and pieces of pine cone and magnolia pods and stuff. There are tomato plants growing in another little bed - and already bearing fruit! There's some mulching going on - evidently he added some wood chips and stuff. And there are nicely-delineated paths through there now, between the little separate beds in this garden. In some little spaces you spot a plastic dinosaur or toy from some kid's "Happy Meal," artfully arranged and tucked in where what's left of an old tree stump has some interesting little notches hidey-holes - almost like a leprechaun lives there. And this neglected, abandoned few square feet over along the edge of the post office grounds is suddenly a lovely little organized, fanciful, green, living, flourishing space that has curb appeal, beauty, originality, creativity, all kinds of neat little eclectic surprises and visual treats, and it's a WONDERFUL use of random materials! It's just CHARMING!!! And it's an asset to the neighborhood now. And this guy, whoever he is, just started doing it, working with a whole lotta NOTHING. NO WAY this is not art!