We’re totally addicted to the History Channel’s “American Pickers” for many reasons but mostly because it taps into our primal need to hunt, hoard, share, trade, wander, and tell stories.
Antiques don’t magically appear in your local antique store or flea market. They are foraged and found and repaired by people like business partners Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz, the shows unlikely stars. Mike is the thin buttoned-down Bud Abbott character while Frank is more Lou Costello with his day-old beard.
Together they wander the back roads of America in a white panel van in search of what most people see as “dumps”: broken down houses and garages you speed past on the way to the beach or the lake, that appear to be filled with junk. When Mike and Frank find one of these places, they’ll pull over and introduce themselves to the owner – older men, widows, daughters – who might be willing to let them forage through their stuff, hoping they’ll come across some treasures to buy, if not some compelling stories.
The result is great television full of improvisation. read more…
For the yearly fashion show given by Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, Isabel Cohen wired together hundreds of metal washers to make the halter top for her floor-length attic insulation skirt (inspired by jellyfish tentacles). It was her answer to the show’s challenging theme: “Create an outfit made of anything but fabric”.
The show is the mastermind of Nancy Fried, the school’s sculpture teacher, who wanted a project that would really engage her twelve students. Now in its seventh year, it has become the event-of-the-year at Fieldson, with many students – and even some teachers – taking on the challenge to create outfits out of dot-candy papers, beads, condoms, fake and real money, Legos, Tic Tacs…
Everyone should have a teacher like Fried who encourages them to go way beyond the expected…
We also love Anne Kunstler’s jelly bean outfit… read more…
We find ourselves inadvertently collecting images of fabulous dresses made out of unlikely materials, like this beauty made by Cristina Liedtke from discarded peanut M&M wrappers. It’s on display at TerraCycle’sGreen Up Shop, a pop-up shop set up in empty retail space in Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City.
“To create the gown, more than 1,800 flowers were individually cut and sewn from 600 Peanut M&Mwrappers, a time-consuming process that took over 100 hours of labor. (Five yards of silk charmeuse and silk shantung were used for the lining.)
Liedtke’s wearable artwork depicts flowers in bloom: The top of the dress displays the initial budding, while the middle portrays a ‘landscape of blooming vibrant poppies,’ according to the designer. ‘Finally, the bottom of the dress expresses a collage of fully bloomed mature flowers,’ she adds.
Terracycle is a company who makes useful products out of garbage, like an Oreo Wrapper Kite and planters made out of crushed computers and fax machines. They package the products in “garbage” as well: used/recycled bottles, boxes etc. Terracycle seems to have figured out ways of recycling that have stymied city governments.
A couple of weeks ago in the New York Times, Lawrence Downes wrote a beautiful report from Haiti called The Kite Makers that painted a vivid picture of the devastated country in a few short paragraphs. He described the resourcefulness at play everywhere for those “with skills, strength and luck”. At the Petionville Club camp – donated tarps forged into houses – someone made an ingenious door hinge from the torn sole of a plastic sandal, fastened by nails hammered through bottle caps, which act as washers to prevent sandal from tearing. “Making do with next to nothing is the way of life in Haiti”.
Haitian children make small kites out of whatever they can find – twigs, dry cleaning bags, thread spooled on a can or bottle . Flying homemade kites is relief from their harsh reality. read more…
Constance Old recently alerted us to Crispina ffrench’s work:
“Crispina ffrench is an artist/crafter who makes terrific “improvised’ work. She is author of a recent book called The Sweater Chop Shop: Sewing One-of-a-Kind Creations from Recycled Sweaters which teaches how to cut and felt cast-off sweaters to make them into cool new things: like mufflers, blankets, pillows, and…even other sweaters. I have a really beautiful blanket she made (below). She has her own website www.crispina.com and sells work through Etsy.”
Felting is essentially a controlled way of washing knitted wool until it shrinks and tightens, changing both texture and color. We started to imagine huge possibilities right then and there (and in the inadvertently shrunken sweaters we may have mistakenly given away)…
We also remembered Page Goolrick telling us about the black turtleneck she made into a cardigan; she cut it right up the front with a scissors and had her local tailor sew in a big stainless steel zipper…
We started to deconstruct our notions about cut knit unravelling unmercifully, and started to think about old sweaters completely differently… read more…
I was walking across 125th Street in Harlem the other day and noticed a guy standing outside of a store, wearing really surprising earrings in one ear. “Wow, cool earrings” I said, “Did you make them?”
“Yeah, and they’ve got a story…” He said with a smile. He told me he dreamed them, dreamed of earrings made of mailbox keys, etched with his astrological sign, Aries. So, he took a couple of mailbox keys to a jeweler and had them etched…in silver.
He was really proud of them.
…Original and beautiful, with a backstory I never would have guessed.. read more…
In an email yesterday morning, a reader mentioned that her experiences living in developing countries led her to develop an approach similar to ‘the improvised life’s. We asked where she had lived and what that approach was and were knocked out by her answer:
“I lived in Vietnam for four years and Bolivia for three – amazing and fantastical places, where I learned many, many things, not least of which is how to view objectsneutrally, so that you can see what they can really do beyond their stated purpose..Like the woman in a market in Hanoi who was peeling carrots and other ingredients, to sell as ready-made ingredients for folks to buy and make their own lotus blossom salad, and what did she use as a peeler? A chopstick, a razor blade and a cleverly-deployed rubber band: voila, vegetable peeler, third-world style….”
The jerry-rigged vegetable peeler reminded us of Kevin Kelly’s wonderful blog Street Use, about ingeniously improvised solutions, customizations and contraptions he and his friends have spotted in their travels around the world:
“In short — stuff as it is actually used, and not how its creators planned on it being used. As William Gibson said, ‘The street finds its own uses for things.‘”read more…
A good deal of our inspiration comes from seeing how other people improvise to get where they need to go, build what they need, figure out solutions. We also benefit mightily from things that remind us that there is a huge, endlessly creative universe out there, and that we are a part of it. Tom Ashcraft is one of those people whose work gives both views at once.
We wrote about Tom a few months ago and keep an eye on what he is up to. He is one of those ahead-of-his-time people who keep following their path whether one or hundreds of people come along with him.We were thrilled to see that thousands of folks have their eyes on him these days: Recently, Wired posted DIY Recordings of Awakening Sun and last weekend NPR’s All Things Considered interviewed Tom. read more…
Constance Old, who was one of the lucky few to have actually been at Page’s dinner party, turned her goody bag into art. Constance makes hooked rugs, a traditional American art form originally created out of need: to warm the floors of drafty homes with whatever was at hand. Scraps of fabric, from worn clothing or sheets, were cut into strips and, using a simple bent metal tool, “hooked” into a grid-like backing made from a strong, loosely-wovan fabric such as burlap. Gradually, a span of loops would result, to make a beautiful rug.
Rather than fabric scraps, Constance uses contemporary found materials like sales receipts, plastic bags, string, Styrofoam, thread whatever is at hand that has meaning for her. She used the packaging from the different elements in Page’s goody bag to make miniature rug-hooked “journal entries.” read more…
Designer and contributor-of-brilliant-ideas Pamela Hovland recently improvised wonderful wrist-warmers out of an old pair of wool socks. Here’s how this inspired bit of repurposing came about, in her own words and photos:
“I often wear wrist warmers while I’m working away at my computer as my hands are cold from the fall to the spring. I first saw them in northern Sweden; someone was selling hand-knit versions at an artisan’s market in a remote village. I remember that I didn’t know what they were; I was simply attracted to the colors and patterns. Once I figured it out, however, I bought a pair knit from beautiful charcoal grey and burnt orange wool and ended up wearing them nearly every day last winter.
A few months ago I washed some beautiful (and expensive) wool socks in the washing machine by mistake, and as a result, they shrunk. As I couldn’t bear to throw them out, it occurred to me that perhaps I could repurpose them somehow. read more…
This is ‘the improvised life’s first Christmas and we’re going to take off starting NOW, Christmas Eve, to wander around the city and look at all the wonderful hoopla, have a cocktail, cool out, count blessings. We’ll be back on Monday for the run-up to the New Year…
Until then, we are wishing you a big barrel of JOY!
Nearly a year ago at the Thanksgiving dinner of friends, Louise Randolph brought me a handmade pot she’d had for many years. The rough-hewn pot, improvised out of a coffee can, some wire and a piece of wood, had belonged to her late great aunt Eva Dahlgren. Eva grew up in a privileged home, and gave it all up when she volunteered to help refugees in France during World War II, an act of sacrifice that almost cost her her life. She refused to leave France when the Nazis began to close in, and held in an internment camp, in Baden Baden, for over fifteen months. This pot was one of a few possessions she brought from the camp upon her release. Even though Louise guards it as a treasured possession, it’s a bit of a mystery. read more…
Some time ago in the New York Sunday Times Style Magazine, Alexi Worth wrote about El Anatsui, an African artist who uses twist-off bottle caps to make shimmering sculptures that look like liquid mosaics. The story of how El Anatsui discovered his unlikely material for art is compelling. It is a fine example of the mindset that can lead to discovery and improvisation, and often fantastic creations: curiosity, openness, listening to materials, a willingness to experiment, patience:
“One day ten years ago in the countryside of southern Nigeria, a slim middle-aged man drove past a bag of garbage. Garbage is not an unusual sight in West Africa; village roads are often lined with a parallel hillock of trash – dusty bottles, spoiled food, tin cans, car parts – out of which small trees sometimes grow. But this solitary bag looked promising. It was a quiet, sunny late afternoon in the dry season. The man stopped the car and walked over to look inside…” 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…
Although I have a big built-in bookcase, there always seems to be books floating around my apartment; either there’s no room (because books – like food -are the purchases I make weekly), or they are books I am currently using. They need a place and a way to be that isn’t a mess, but is accessible and nice looking. My solution is to stack them on “stands” that I’ve found on the street, and that are to me, pleasingly elemental, like the three above. read more…
which teaches how to cut and 
