See you next year

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Taking a break. Hope y’all have a safe and happy New Year’s. I’ll be back Jan. 1, 2019 with my annual top 100. (PS. I took some liberties with the La Mancha sign — they actually open back up tomorrow.)

Declare it art

Monday, November 18, 2019

I walked past this handicapped spot yesterday and thought of the “Make it art” assignment from Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing:

Think then of some regular walk or drive or ride you experience often, or even that you’re experiencing for the first time. Imagine yourself a curator. Decide what, among the things you notice, you might declare public works of art.

Perhaps a disheveled pylon marking a street flaw that ought to have been fixed by now. Maybe a post that seems to be a lingering remnant of an otherwise departed fence. Possibly even a child with a piercing stare.

Grant yourself the superpower of making “art” wherever you go, and see how that changes what you perceive.

Art is everywhere, if you say so.

(More in his newsletter.)

Related: “Borrow a kid.”

UPDATE: Alan Jacobs has pointed me to this image from Sarah Hendren’s The Accesible Icon Project:

You are fine without advice and suggestions

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

I’ve been posting collages with a new technique and Instagram commenters keep asking me how I do them.

A few have been puzzled or even perturbed by my recent “Don’t Ask,” “Don’t Tell,” “No teaching” policy.

“Aren’t you all about sharing?”

Well, yes, I am all about sharing, which is why I posted the work in the first place.

But no, I don’t want to instruct step-by-step how the collages are done, because:

1) I’m still exploring the technique myself and I don’t want to codify it or make any rules or make it boring

2) I am certain that if curious commenters sat down and tried to approximate my technique with their own tools and materials, they would come up with something of their own.

What I really want is to rewrite this wonderful sign in an adventure playground on Governor’s Island called “The Yard.” It reads, “Your children are fine without advice and suggestions.”

I might rewrite it for adults:

YOU ARE FINE WITHOUT ADVICE AND SUGGESTIONS.

START PLAYING.

Rubbing the right way

Thursday, May 9, 2019

I had the rare free morning on tour in Chicago yesterday. It was cold and a little gloomy but it wasn’t raining. Good walking weather. The city was really rubbing me the right way. (So I rubbed it back.)

Lake Michigan was a perfect emerald green. I thought of Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who made her home here, and her “Plan Be”: “existing only in the present.”