About a decade ago I read an article about building community through making ‘bad art thingies’ together. The idea: A neighborhood host volunteers his home and kitchen table, and participants bring potluck food and recyclable materials — empty cereal boxes, fabric scraps, sequins, wrapping paper, old birthday cards, toilet paper tubes, etc.

The host provides basics like scissors, crayons and markers, construction paper, glue and staples, and decides whether to open up the creative possibilities by including hot glue guns and paint.

The process: Sit down at the table and make something out of the stuff. It could be an oatmeal container with glitter, two straws and sections of the comics taped to the side. No rules, except talk, eat, share supplies and techniques. Then take home your thingie. Or swap thingies. Toss thingie.

This made me unexplainably, wildly happy. I ran to the garage and pulled out an empty laundry soap holder.  I brought it into the studio and started covering the sides, using old wallpaper, stamped cardboard, scraps of old paintings I never liked, postcards, spiraled pipe cleaners, etc.

Breathless with the complete absence of the ‘inner snick’—I was in kindergarten again, smiling and singing away.  The humble nature of the materials freed me up. The only part missing was that thick paste with a paddle attached to the lid that smelled like wintergreen lifesavers.

My husband who didn’t read the article, saw my thingie and said, “Uh, honey, where are you going to sell that?”

I still have it. I invite you to make one. Feed the Beauty.

 If anyone knows where I can find the article mentioned above, please let me know.

As an artist I attempt to make the unseen inside of me visible. Slow has inspired me to consider what affects the actions of creativity I take to make art.

I work in mixed media and acrylic. Fast. I wrestle with encaustic. Slow. Scanography-slow and fast.

I wait for the paint to dry, the wax to melt, the gesso to harden. Or not—because there are hairdryers and chemicals that will speed things up…and I use them all the time.

I’m in slow mode as I collect images and textures and ideas; fabric, paper, books, 3D objects. I make note of other people’s art and web content. I create from three themes that repeat and inspire: beauty, joy, brainfood.

This is not done as a rush job determined by a schedule. I once pulled out clippings of toys from a 1950’s Sears catalog that I laminated in 1992 to use in a scanner image in 2006. See ‘Kittens’ at www.sophielumen.blogspot.com

I went back to my blog recently to post about what was a previously private process. I’m curious to see if this affects what comes out, and to learn about the way people do the same in other countries. Because we are all slow artists of our invisible lives.