Ah the French…
Every now & again my lovely mom pops by with a wondrous french publication in her hands called Marie Claire Idees….
I don’t often get a moment to sit and peruse happily, but the past week what with all my technology quitting on me I sat down and consumed a few and in the process, stumbled upon this wondrous lady.
It got me all excited about little “somewhat pointless” craft projects… stitching little stars out of pretty fabrics for little-girl wands, making floral wreaths from magical findings… and then I chastised myself a little for being tempted by pure pleasure and not being original. The problem with this lush internet world we live in is that we’re merging all our styles and perhaps stifling ourselves and our originality? What do you guys think? hmmmm…
The other day I heard this great chat where the writer being interviewed said that:
He continued to explain that “if you see a beautiful person you want to draw them, and if you see a beautiful drawing you want to put it on your wall or you want to take a photograph of it. It’s definitely been [his] experience with music [he’s] loved and books [he’s] loved” that “they inspire in us the desire to make more of them.”
This idea made me feel a little more comfortable with my need to replicate and perhaps my lack of originality. Maybe I wasn’t so much unoriginal as much as following the pursuit of beauty-creation. When we see something beautiful it is natural that we want to make more of it to surround ourselves with that beauty… isn’t it? We surround ourselves with those things, words, people, items we find beautiful.
Mr V & I often have a discussion where he argues that the pursuit of all designery items or furniture or ‘things’ is completely shallow and meaningless which is true in one sense, but I like to argue that it’s not true in another. We surround ourselves with beautiful things because it enhances our creative space and environment… we surround ourselves with beauty to feel that the world is more beautiful - is that really a crime?
Whenever I get on one of these ‘needing to make something with no function’ quests I often chastise myself, as none of these things can pay the bill and somehow TERRIBLY, when things don’t have a function, I manage to guilt myself out of doing them… feeling I should be working at getting clients or working on Spoonful… and the other day I thought how silly all these self-guilt-trips and justifications were.
Really, we have one life. And if we allowed ourselves and were able to see it as, as simple as a life of replicating the beauty we see, then it does have a simple pure function. Beauty something to be enjoyed by all who set their eyes upon it and therefore is not as selfish as initially perceived. It is something for the inner-workings of the soul… something for our eyes and hands and in another manner it spreads the word of that beauty.
I see this beauty and in replicating it, I allow more to see it and experience that lush simple pleasure of visual enjoyment.
Shallow, maybe, simple, definitely, but something I’m going to do…? You betcha.
thea.
xx
