It’s been one of those days. Actually it has been one of those weeks. Missed appointments, missed roads, misplaced cats. It’s no wonder my art project today wasn’t turning out like I’d planned. This piece started life as a collage of old Hollywood stars. Say hello to Humphrey Bogart in the lower right, Fred Astaire in the purple circle, and Bette Davis at the top.

The problem started with my photocopied images. I was in a rush at the copy center and didn’t notice that I had loaded my originals in the machine sideways, leaving me with only half the images I had wanted to work with. I also failed to notice that they were really poor copies, very dark and blurry. By the time I got to Chris’ house (late) it was too late to go back and try for better copies. Trying to balance the over dark images I ended up with a dark, dull color mix. Actually, I ended up with yuck. So I in added in some brighter and lighter colors and I had double yuck. More paint, more yuck. By the time I’d reached quadruple yuck I decided that this piece was trash and I was no longer trying to save it.

I decided to just start adding colors and shapes and have a good time playing with the paint. I didn’t want to just trash this and start with a new piece of paper because I really prefer to reuse as many things as I can in life. Remember the lamps? Remember your three R’s. Reuse, repurpose, and recycle. Many layers later I abandoned my brushes and began working with my fingers. It was liberating and fun to just play without any concern about the end result.

The finished piece met with polite golf claps from the others but I actually kind of like it. One person told me that the colors were OK but she really didn’t like the words.  I like it, words and all. Considering it was just play done on a trash piece, I’m pretty darn happy with it.

As I was looking at the latest layer of paint the words came to me from a conversation I had with my friend, Jory, last night. Jory is what I call an environmental warrior. He puts himself out on the line trying to nurture the planet and all its inhabitants while fighting to get others to join him. In short, he tries to protect us from ourselves. We were talking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and he said the following words, “We are nature, while we slowly kill it we also slowly kill ourselves.” His words struck a chord with me and jumped back into my thoughts today, ending up as part of my day’s work.