Working Big is a remarkable book about large-scale art projects for kids. Written in 1975, it is long out-of-print, but available these days as a free, downloadable pdf from Public Collectors. It gives an expansive view (with how-to’s) of discovery projects to do with your own kids, or fantasize about for your (grown-up) self.
Working Big’s essential premise is that kids and artists often take similar approaches in exploring and working with their environment. Its chapter titles – ”Kids’ Space Equals Artists’ Space” and “The Artist Shapes as the Child Shapes” – should be printed on tee shirts, or scrawled on walls. Pictures of kids working away with obvious pleasure are interspersed with images of works by notable artists, like Robert Smithson‘s earthworks, The Broken Circle and Amarillo Ramp. This inspiring book holds a lot of wisdom about kids AND the creative process in general:
“When nature itself provides the medium, children are eager and intuitive artists. They need no one to tell them that the moist grittiness of sand is just right for sculpturing or read more…
At the farmer’s market this weekend, Keith Stewart was selling beautiful Christmas trees from his farm, as well as “wall trees” which are tall sculptural branches cut from huge trees. Keith recommended leaning them against or affixing them to a wall and decorating them like a regular Christmas tree (at much less cost).
There are lots of possible plays on the idea of “wall Christmas trees” that would make for fun-to-improvise (if last-minute) trees. The elaborate one above appeared on in The Style Files last year, the brilliant inspiration of Jane of All the Luck in the World; she used her collection read more…
‘the improvised life’ is proud to be included in NYC Bloggers Do the Holidays, a group blog by “the city’s coolest bloggers”*. If you haven’t already, I recommend checking out the sites below for all the fun and illuminating holiday ideas they’ve come up with…
I found a lot of great non-New York-centric links while poking around these sites. To check them out, scroll to the second half of this post.
Melt one ice cube in a skillet by placing it in the sun. When melted, add 1 cup water and saute slowly — until water is transparent. Serve small portions, because this dish is rich as well as mouth-watering.
It’s from a book I had as a kid called Mud Pies and Other Recipes by Marjorie Winslow. “This is an outdoor cookbook,” reads the Foreword, “The market place, then, will be a forest or a sand dune or your own back yard.” It’s a cookbook for a kid’s world outdoors, even if the kid, like me, never actually acted out the recipes. Like the best children’s books, it fueled my imagination and painted a world rich with possibilities: read more…
Urawaza means “secret tricks” or “unmapped short-cuts” in Japanese. These are innovations and solutions to life’s little problems that humble people figure out for themselves, like How to Give Yourself a Steam Facial in the Tub (sit in the tub with an umbrella open over your head)…or How to Soothe an Itchy Mosquito Bite (put a piece of adhesive tape on it). I learned about urawaza from a charming book I stumbled on called Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japanby Lisa Katayama.
It lists loads of urawaza, like How to Tell Which Direction You’re Going In, and How to Restore A Shrunken Sweater to It’s Original Size, along with the reason why it works. But my favorite part of the book is a chapter called “How to Discover Your Own Urawaza”, a step-by-step guide that really describes the process – and mindset – of improvising. Here’s a really condensed version: read more…
On December 8th, PBS’s Independent Lens will air Between the Folds, a film that chronicles ten fine artists and theoretical scientists who have forged unconventional lives – often abandoning careers – practicing the unlikely medium of origami. They use paper-folding to explore new ideas about science, mathematics and creativity. Judging from the trailer, the film is about a great deal more than this simple description and worth marking on your calendar. Writes Director, Vanessa Gould:
“At its heart, Between the Folds is a film about potential. The potential of an uncut paper square. The potential of a wild scientific idea. The potential to see things differently... read more…
The New York Review of Books recently ran a surprising article about paintings made by the artist David Hockney on his i-phone, using an app called Brushes. It allows the user to fingerpaint, smear or draw on the screen using a full color-wheel spectrum. (Hockney likes to use his thumb rather than forefinger to manipulate the paint.) You can fashion brushstrokes, making them more transparent, or thicker or thinner. And you can email your finished image to friends.
Hockney described why he is so taken with Brushes, which he uses anywhere he has the urge, even upon waking, when he is inspired to paint the sunrise he sees from his bed: read more…
Designer Pamela Hovland sent this image of her son Henry’s costume, a family collaboration. It’s amazing what recycled cardboard boxes and some paint can become…
When software engineer Gever Tulley left his job at Adobe to start his Tinkering School for Kids, he posted a letter on his blog, ‘some things right ‘, to the people he had worked with. In it, he left them with some “good ideas” like Play! and Instead of Having a Career Path, Always Do the Most Interesting Thing You Can Do!
The real knock-out is ” Number 2: “Defer Judgment” from a sign he saw on the wall of IDEO, a global design and innovation consultancy that has innovated novel ways of collaborative problem solving. read more…
Helvetia is a tiny town in the West Virginia Appalachians where I‘ve learned a great deal about improvising over the nearly forty years I’ve been visiting there. Settled by Swiss-German immigrants in 1869 who started from scratch in its wilderness valley, a strong tradition of resourcefulness courses through the town. “If you don’t got it, you don’t need it” is a common saying, a way of everyday survival for folks who are a forty-five minute drive on winding mountain roads from the nearest store. If you don’t got it, you figure something else out…like baking a souffle in an iron skillet (no souffle dish), or using a door knob as a pestle, or a wine bottle to roll out dough…I once saw a man use a pitchfork to stir a huge cauldron full of boiling ramps (wild leeks) set over an open fire…
When my friend Eleanor Mailloux, who grew up in Helvetia, got around to looking at my blog, she wrote that it reminded her of a game she played as a kid. That old Appalachian game was a simple way to cultivate an improvisational mindset, and still is: read more…
This morning Andrea Raisfeld alerted me to a perfect little film created by designer Susan Hochbaum. It’s called The Pastry Project and it begins:
“I came to Paris middle-aged, divorced, and newly in love. Granting myself a sabbatical and renting out my suburban home, I moved with my beau to this romantic city for a year of living shamelessly…Abandoning restraint, and with the appetite of a teenager, I’ve found my muse…”
What follows will change the way you view Paris forever…(click here to watch)Ed note 9/30/11: unfortunately, the perfect video has been swapped for a slideshow…And now a new book tells the story. read more…
Gever Tully started a Tinkering School for kids, an exploratory curriculum designed to teach kids how to build the things they think of. By exploratory he means setting kids loose in a shop full of tools and materials (with supervision) and encouragement to “fool around”. In his wonderful TED talk, Tully describes the “deep internal realization” kids have from the experience, which happen to be the same ones you get (at any age) from improvising:
“that you can figure things out as you fool around”…
…nothing turns out as planned – ever…
…all projects go awry…
…success is in the doing (failures are celebrated and analyzed; problems become puzzles)…”
As I watched Tulley’s talk, I thought: I want to go there! I want a tinkering school for grownups! read more…
After reading ‘ted muehling and the inspiration journal’, designer Pamela Hovland wrote about the many kinds of visual journals she’s kept over the years: “one for my garden, one for my house, one for my summer cabin in Minnesota (all of which are ongoing projects). I keep a visual journal for art and design inspiration, another for wardrobe inspiration (as sometimes I’ll attempt to make a skirt I’ve seen or ask a tailor to do the same). I even have a journal devoted to all things black and white.”
Pamela mentioned Jessica Helfand’s wonderful book Scrapbooks: An American History. That sent me on a path that expanded my view of what journals and scrapbooks can be. One of Helfand’s own scrapbooks commemorates the ritual cleaning of her graphic design studio; it includes bits of dead insect, chicken meat, angel hair pasta, a Prednisone prescription, and Clementine peel into glassine envelope. read more…
The Fixer’ Collective started last fall as workshop in a year-long exhibition called “Mend” at the Proteus Gowanus Gallery in Brooklyn. When the exhibition ended in June, the collective continued, meeting every Thursday evening at the gallery. It’s an adhoc community group with a simple premise: you bring broken objects to fix (or to get help fixing), or come empty-handed and game to help other fix their stuff. No experience is required because, it seems, The Fixer’s Collective just likes meeting with each other and figuring out fixes in the moment. They call it “improvisational mending and fixing.
When you think about it, a lot of mending is improvisational: it means figuring out a unique solution suited for the uniquely broken item at hand. And there’s no reason why any group of people couldn’t start their own Fixer’s Collective. read more…
by Lisa Katayama.
. That sent me on a path that expanded my view of what journals and scrapbooks can be. One of Helfand’s own 
