I often speak with the kids in our art group about what I call ‘accidental art’ and ‘experimental art’. Both of which can be extremely satisfying, and with a working appreciation for both, resilience can be seen and applied in a myriad of ways.
Accidental Art
The first time I knowingly utilised a mistake and turned it into a feature, was with a dress I made when I was 15. I was a lazy sewer, never wanting to ‘finish’ the insides of a garment properly – which was the bain of my TAFE trained mum 🙂 . However, I invented shortcuts and sewed happily onwards. With this dress, I was avoiding applying a facing to a V neck, the shortcut didn’t work, but as I loathe unpicking, I added a feature patch over the problem section which
a) strengthened the dodgy area
b) caught attention and complements
c) Taught me that in this case, making a facing would have been quicker than coming up with my feature and
d) Served as an example of how a mistake can be worked into the whole and become something that in the end will appear as though it always belonged – and can be very beautiful.
That lesson has served me well in each of the 4 ways mentioned – mistakes are going to happen in art and in life. Work them in.
Experimental Art
This is similar but different to accidental art. Accidental art might be found in the way the colours of the spices being loaded into a curry contrast against each other, or in strawberry juice that seeps into the paper towel they are draining on… or the rainbow colours on an oil slick on top of a puddle on the ground – or simply in a mistake. Experimental art is kinda like accidental art on purpose! Experimenting with colour and medium and just seeing what happens. And I recon I even like what I turn out in this means about 50% of the time! Winning!
These two topics are frequently discussed in our group as I see the ability to experiment, incorporate errors and see beauty in unexpected places – as something that adds pleasure and resilience to not only art or creativity – but to life in general.
All is not lost because of a spill.
So anyway – today we watched two videos – one of a childrens book called “Beautiful Oops” being read, and another to introduce it, of the author Barney Saltzberg, telling a group of kindergarteners, how he came up with the story. Have a watch – it’s quite delightful, not to mention, purpseful!
After some chat, the videos, and showing them some of my own experiments and accidents – they each had a go. Drawing squiggles on scrap, passing their squiggles around the circle, and turning whatever they got into something from their imagination.
These all had a maximum of 3 minutes so don’t view as serious art, but of imaginitive interpretation! If you look hard, you’ll see the original squiggle in many of them.
I think they are great 🙂
