26 Comments

Create a tiny intervention in a landscape you frequent. Check in with it from time to time. Note whether or not it lasts, and consider why.

I walk our dogs daily around our neighborhood & recently added fun magnets (small ones) on the signs (stop signs, no parking signs, etc…)

The magnets are dog faces/ dog butts (funny!) and various animals. I Check on the magnets on every walk & always wonder if anyone notices them. Almost all of them are still there & one ( a cherub) has relocated itself in the mulch next to a tree. Would be happy to send pictures if you want!

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Oh wow what an awesome example! Sure, love to see a pic or two! consumed@robwalker.net

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At my workplace there are these funny vents with bars. The bars swing out & I've been planning to make some cardboard figures to position inside, to peer out through the bars of their cells.

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Yes! Do it!

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LOL I love it!

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I create sheep and hide them, for a game of hide-N-Sheep. It is a slow process and I am not well-traveled, but my most recent iteration allows for a much easier hiding experience. Once hidden, I post them on Instagram (@hidensheep). Something small, and fun to see how long they stay and wonder when, and where they flock to.

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Very cool, will check your IG later today. Thanks!

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Are they made of clay? (Here's the account for others reading this thread. So cool! https://www.instagram.com/hidensheep/

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Thanks, yes to clay. With a simple cookie cutter, some underglaze, and a magnet on back after firing. I've added some core values on the back of each... Love, compassion and more.

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I highlighted your Hide N Sheep project in today's paid-subscriber issue, I can send that to you if you're not on that list, just send your address to consumed@robwalker.net (I have no way of easily figuring which "mike" you are on the main subscriber list :) ) I hope you get some new followers!

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May I suggest a chat space for people to share their found art?

It seems to me, that it becomes art when someone photographs it or draws it. Maybe the creator was thinking of it as art and maybe not, but the person who discovers it and labels it, and creates composition becomes an artist in the process.

During the first year of the pandemic, a lot of people started painting rocks, making fairy houses, and adding crocheted items to signs. It made for a fun search and find along our walking path. Others made chalk art as a way to connect and say hello. I miss that random mysterious connection.

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A good thought! Maybe I'll float this in a future issue. Thanks!

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Just read that the owner of the building where Banksy painted a mural has removed the WALL, ostensibly to keep or sell it.

I would call that declaring it art!

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Ha ha somehow anything involving Banksy just takes it to the next level!

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Hi Rob. I need a word for that adult child who recently came back into our lives (happily) after having been adopted out as a baby when my 14 year-old gave birth secretly. It's awkward to explain the relationship at every introduction!

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As an adoptee, the word grandparents comes to mind. Though, I always called my birth family birthmom, birth grandmother . . . . My birth half sister does get awkward. She just calls me Sis.

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Yes that's a lot! Great one, thank you :)

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Yes! (again : )

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Thanks. I agree with 'make it art'. As a (selfish) photographer I relish the 'found object' as elicited by Ansel Adams. I find many objects, installations, that are art without intent. And love them for what they are: deliberate or intuitive. Either way, methinks can be determined as art

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I’m reminded of Jane Fulton Suri’s book “Thoughtless Acts?” which documents everyday design interventions. For example, a plastic bag tied over a bike seat as a makeshift rain cover, or a crushed can wedged in a door to hold it open. The question of “is it design?” (or art) is less interesting maybe then the evidence of people reordering their world in new ways, or solving tiny problems for themselves, or leaving a trace of their presence – intentionally or not. Thanks for your post.

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Well said! And I will check out that book -- thank you!

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Help! There's a Paul Auster short piece of memoir/story I can half-remember involving a)picking his kids up from his estranged partner's house and b) coins on the sidewalk. What is it???!!

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I have no idea! Any Auster fans out there?

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For a couple of years, when I would drive over to see my mother, I would notice a pair of sneakers tied together and draped up high over a telephone wire, and I would wonder how they got there. Then one day I drove by and they were gone. I wonder what happened to them.

I declare that was Art.

Rob, just remembering your posts about calendars last year. Just curious, are you doing one for 2022?

Peace.

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Yes working on a 2022 calendar! I have actually been working on two possibilities but I guess I better make my decision soon :)

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November 17, 2021
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Ha ha I have not seen that, but sounds right on!

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