anything is art

last month when i was home in the states, i went to pittsburgh to visit with my grandparents. i've been taking trips to pittsburgh since i was born, but with the exception of a few drunken outings on carson street, had never actually spent much time getting to know the city.

since i had adam with me on this trip, i tried to find fun and interesting things for him to do besides sit around with more of my relatives (he met about 60 of them). one thing i had always wanted to do was go to the warhol museum, and my mom was kind enough to shuttle us downtown since i don't drive anymore (no insurance = no go).

wow. what an amazing place. i kind of knew this but warhol did WAY more than the pop art that he seems to be most famous for. we spent seven floors wandering, gawking, and being inspired by the idea that anything can be art. i loved every minute but one of my favourites was the silver cloud room, which featured big, silver, cloud-shaped balloons that floated continuously thanks to a carefully crafted flow of air. i felt like a big kid playing in there. i also liked how he filmed EVERYTHING. people sleeping, people getting haircuts, people putting on makeup. more interesting than you would think and a good reminder of how human we all are.

adam and i vowed to start doing more creative things when we got home, which of course has fallen by the wayside because this thing called life keeps getting in the way of our fun, but i thought about it again tonight when i was running along the thames. two things i'm aspiring to do right now:

1) start a blog of "shit that happens at my apartment building". like the potato that has rotted and solidified to the garbage shoot. or the three mattresses that found themselves piled up in front of our outside bin room. maybe even the notice from southwark council announcing that said bin rooms are a massive hazard because people like to set fire to them. if this isn't art, i don't know what is.

2) get my scavenging license (or whatever it's called) so that i can go pick through the stuff that floats up from the thames. yes, you do have to have a license to do this, but there are some wicked treasures along the banks of this mighty river. old tiles, parts of ships, and loads of things from years gone by. good things for me to make a collage out of!

in the meantime, i'll be here, thinking of more ways to try and find thrills in things that "would ordinarily bore you"...(and hoping my bins don't get set on fire)