Making Your Life your Art

I often hear people say they aren’t very creative. Really? How so?

I believe we are all creative on some level. Making bread, tending a garden, painting, writing, woodworking, sculpting, singing, playing an instrument – these are all more obvious acts of creation.

Even the work of designing a house, or teaching, or the simple work of making lovely designs in the foam of a latte is a creative act. We often dismiss these types of acts as not being creative, perhaps because they are our work/job, or perhaps because they are simply things we do ‘everyday’. Creativity is reserved for art, we say.

But is it, really? What if we looked at making our lives our art, by acting from a mindset of abundance, joy, and appreciation in everything we do? By falling in love with life, which is a miracle, by the way, and by being so present in the moment that we notice everything, and by noticing everything, we are enriched.

Let’s take the person making the milk foam designs on lattes for example. There are those that make a simple leaf design, and then there are baristas that go way beyond that to make a floral arrangement! It may seem like a silly example, yet that person enjoys expressing themselves, and how they do it, at least at work, is by going beyond the expected to make art in the foam!

Acts of creativity are sometimes unintended by the creator, yet they are out there for us to notice, and to celebrate. Did this farmer know he/she was making an artistic scene when parking the red tractor at the end of lush green rows? I doubt it. Yet there it is. A scene full of design and color - my kind of photograph! Serendipity strikes.

Likewise, did this person knowingly purchase pink and blue pails and mops? You bet they did! They were making their home artistic, and therefore their life as their art, and it was a delight to discover this. It’s way more than just a mop and a bucket outside a home.

These clay pots were put out to dry in the sun before they get fired. It was an ordinary task for the laborer, yet when viewed from the right perspective, it was art! Did he even know how lovely it looked from the stairs above? In his desire to keep an order to it all, he was creating a wonderful pattern!

Maybe if I wasn’t ‘living in the moment’ with eyes/mind wide open, I wouldn’t have noticed these things above. Yet because I do try to regularly practice the art of noticing, I was rewarded with these views.

Making my life as art may seem easy, since I’m a photographer. Yet it’s so much more than that. It’s a mindset, a way I look at the world. Yet often I too get caught up in the day to day, the mundane, and I slide back into feeling like my muse has hopped a plane for a different country and a different host. I have to remind myself to ‘walk my talk’, to get back on the track of being more mindful.

By noticing everything, celebrating even the smallest things of wonder/beauty, we create a more open mind to the potential right where we are, even if we are just weeding the garden. While I was pulling out some rather invasive ferns, a rather mundane task, I happened to notice the spores on the back side of the frond. You might think ‘oh-oh, more ferns in the making’, but when I saw this I marveled at it. Held up to the light, it was remarkable! It made the rest of the weeding a bit more tolerable, knowing I was going to photograph it later. Right in the middle of ‘life’, I found art.

I was on my way to a photo conference I was to present at in Moab. It was a long drive from California, but as a photographer I knew I would stop here and there as I saw things. I had been up since 3:30 AM, and as I drove by this field I noticed the irrigation sprinklers going off. I remember thinking - what the heck? It’s 28° F! As I drove by, however, I noticed the sparkle of icicles and water spraying from the irrigation system. I hit the brake. Intuitively I knew there was something there to photograph. At first, I was simply taken by the overall scene of water spraying everywhere and ice forming. I made the first image, to tell the overall story, but then I began to notice more things. The second image was especially fun to see. Especially when I waited for the sprinkler to come my way, so I could get the water backlit. It took many tries to get it just right for the water to be suspended rather than too streaky; and it took several instances of backing up to not get everything wet!! Needless to say, I was having a blast with a field irrigation system! Right in the middle of ‘life’ (i.e. a long road trip), I found art, perhaps because I believed there would be creative things to see along the drive, and I was open to it.

It was such a worthwhile stop along the way to Moab. To think I almost drove by it! Something inside of me, perhaps because I have been training myself to notice things more, told me to stop.

Admittedly, I am not perfect at being present all the time. No one is. But I do try to be in the moment wherever I am, so imagine my delight when I came upon this farmhouse in Slovenia and saw this scene below! People in central Europe often make their homes so attractive with window boxes spilling with flowers. On this farm, this had functionality and beauty - the drying corn was for their livestock during the winter. But to hang it below the flowers, well, that just took someone making their life their art to do that…

In the words of poet Mary Oliver:

“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

I continue to work on making my life as art. A life that celebrates beauty, wonder, excitement, curiosity every chance I get. And when I get the opportunity, I’ll make photographs that express that, no matter what the subject matter.

Have a great weekend, y’all! See you soon.