Sunday 13 May 2012

Mud Mud Glorious Mud

Yesterday I was showing my messy output to my partner's 18-year-old son. He was somewhat bemused. The mess didn't faze him, but the concept was slightly out of touch. He already thinks I'm a bit of a loony hippy type and I guess I just added fuel to the fire - though he was very impressed by cress.

I think he was fairly comfortable with the fact that I was enjoying this strange hobby until I confessed that I was also leading a band of merry mess-makers across the globe and that you were painting your car tyres and getting snakes involved. I think I may have opened his eyes to a whole new world of crazy creatives in touch with our right brains.

Frankly he has nothing to talk about - what with his obsessions with his hair, wearing trousers that deliberately show his underpants and hanging smelly deodorisers in his car. Youth today eh?

Anyway, we digress... We've been sharing our family's reactions to our Mess as we've gone through the weeks, but I thought that this week we might be braver. How about taking our challenges further afield. Start gently with friends, colleagues... then maybe push yourself. Ask a stranger to join in. Who dares set up camp on the pavement with a pile of chalk and invite passers-by to add their mark to your sidewalk masterpiece?

I may take a page to the supermarket and leave it on a shelf with a pen and a few instructions, returning later to see if any brave soul has listened to their heart's creative whisperings among the tinned beans and washing powder. It might be a good idea to put it at child height - our younger friends are more tuned in to picking up opportunity than their parents after all.

I leave you with this challenge as a starting point. Make of it what you will or simply continue on your own messy journey though the book. Today the sun has come out for the first time in what seems like two months so I am taking my little boy to some gardens and bluebells woods for adventure. Their website warns to wear wellies - sounds like a mess opportunity if ever I heard one!!

When we're back I'll post some pictures here...

Later.... It turned out not to be so muddy after all - so I went looking more closely for me mess and blogged about what I found...

Saturday 5 May 2012

How do you like your mess in the morning?

In the flesh this all lumpy and bumpy and full of texture with words jumping out at you. I think it's trying to tell me a story but is struggling to remember the plot

You'll find me saying "that's interesting" a great deal at the moment. I might be observing the effects of acrylics on dried pva glue when sprayed with water... or the intriguing patterns and colour mixes from shaking my camera while taking shots. This is me celebrating the accidents and mistakes.


Pretty shapes that weren't really there captured by a shaking camera. I'm not even going to tell you what this is... just let your imagination come up with the story.

Have you thought about how the work you are doing in your messy journals and the lessons you learn are spilling out in your own lives? Don't you find it's feel very positive to be making mess? I tipped too many herbs in my pasta sauce - it was no longer a dreadful mistake. It was a new taste experience, a different take on a familiar recipe. We're breaking rules that are meant to be broken. We're pushing buttons and trying on outrageous costumes.

I love how the camera blur gives this painting of mine such an angelic feel - another happy accident!


I for one am loving it. I found myself smiling this week when I found myself questioning the instructions in Keri's book. These strips of paper were supposed to be blank... but mine had words on. Also, it's 'interesting' that when she wrote that we should drop them at the same height I assumed it would be from just that...  height. But have you ever tried to drop wispy bits of paper onto a very small book from waist height. They spiral, they curve, they take any direction they wish (except straight down onto the glue covered page). It turns out that 'height' could also be just an inch from the page.

My challenge to you this week is to embrace every mistake outside of your book work as 'interesting' and see where the thought process leads you and within the book, let's see how differently we might be able to interpret a set of instructions by discarding the first thoughts that come to mind - let's see how far we can push ourselves.

Look closely at the picture above. What do you see? I took this photo as a blurry experiment. It wasn't until I saw it on my pc screen that I realised just how fascinating it was. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I found it "very interesting."