Day 378 Art Meditation, April 8, 2024

I ran into this house with the animal-fence again recently - years ago I posted these photos. I wanted to post them again because the owner and family are working on taking the whole thing down. This time I had the courage to knock on the front door and ask if there is a story behind the animal-fence.

When I first saw this animal-fence it was one of the hundreds of reasons I adore living in California. Maybe other Pastor’s kids had more wide open permissiveness than we did, but we had the Northern German rule-book to live by, and maybe I should add in the former East Prussian cultural sternness and “correctness”. California is this wild place where people glue toy-porcelain animals on the top of their enormous fence. (!)

I write this as I am sitting up in my bed wearing flannels, eating my German rye cracker bread and cream cheese, an egg, green tea and honey, coffee and milk and water. I’m blissed out. But this very scenario is not something my mother (who I adore) would approve of. By 9 am she will have accomplished 9 million things, and although I know she has cracked the code for her happiness, I had to move from Pennsylvania to California to work on my Unconditional love.

It’s not unconnected - it’s doing something that gives me this much delight. Like the animal fence. Like my art. I feel like I should hide all of it, but we need more delight, joy, even if it’s as small as a leisurely writing ✍️ and breakfast in bed with the sun streaming in.

When I see this animal-fence, I think the only people who would make something like this are film and set makers. It’s too creative. It’s too over the top. It’s too joyful. What will the neighbors think? How do these people not care about fitting in with the neighborhood? 

The idea I’ve been mulling around for my upcoming May art video has to do with expressiveness, and why this is political, and I am not trying to be a walking billboard for California, but I have to say, the combination of the splendid crisp sunny weather plus toy-animal–art-fences like this makes me just love being alive. 

The daughter of the owner of the house told me her Dad’s story behind the art-fence - and it was nothing about a burning desire to be creative, or “I-always-wanted-to-go-to-art-school”, or “I-believe-art-heals-the-world” - it was just something that happened. People started contributing - (love love love!).

But I bet if I had talked to the owner/artist directly, and if I had more focused questions lined up, I might have had some interesting art conversations.

I LOVE when other people express their weird creativity - especially publicly! -  because it opened/opens up my heart-space that much more on that day, and every time I look at these photos. I’m super grateful for this family’s sense of public art expression. 

I’m also including 2 photos of a house with huge statues of angels in front. I asked the woman who explained that her Auntie puts a statue out every time a loved one dies. 💔

Public art expression helps me in my own art-healing journey … to create art and joy, TOO. I love how art gives me permission to live outside a rule book and allows all of me to be more of me. I can feel my heart-space then.

Sharing my art:

• A sneak peak of the paper sculpture project I’m working on for May.

• “Open your Heart in a new way every day” art print & mugs.

We can’t do it alone, we need each other to help us open up more. We need each other’s art, we need each other’s expressiveness. We need each other’s hearts.

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Love and art to you,

Anne

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