Art everywhere

Sometimes the thought that I have not yet had the big “let’s make a mural” party I first conceived of about thirty years ago takes my breath away. No doubt, I should have written a list, and affixed to that item a “by when” date, and systematically plodded that one to completion.

Perhaps the patterns and colours around us everywhere that give rise to artistic expression make the mural idea less pressing in some way? Perhaps there is something to be said about my organisational skills in a brewery.

Anyhow, there I was in the middle of the back yard , straining my bucket of fermented nettle juice through an old sheet; a smelly process towards providing vegetables with natural, mineral-enriched plant food in measured weekly doses, each part diluted with ten parts water. It was the kind of thing you do merely to achieve the end product. As if tedium is ever expedient.

I scratched my stick back and forth on the surface of the sheet to speed the straining process along. Vague recollections surfaced of tie-dye home experiments when we were kids, and batiks smelling of distemper and coloured tempera powder and hot wax in the art room at school.

Before the smell of hot wax had quite left my mind, I had before me my own chlorophyll-drenched artwork on a piece of old sheet, which I hung proudly on the line to dry.

The revolting smell was now free to waft, via my bedroom window, throughout the house, but I did not care, since I had two five-litre containers of liquid nettle fertiliser (which might still ferment a little more, and appropriate precautions have been taken) and, more importantly, I had green art in the open air.

I had art in the open air, and suddenly, all around me, there was art everywhere.

©2019 Allison Wright