I have too many!

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

Books, ornaments glass, clothes, paintings… Clutter.

In some ways to lose all my possessions would make life simpler as long as I had somewhere to go? Our house has got crowded with ‘stuff’, we have collected things over years and years, and we are trying to get rid of some of it.

But it’s easy to become attached, an object can encompass memories, look at it and you look back in time. Does losing your possessions give you freedom? Or is it oppressive? What if you only have the clothes you stand up in, no credit or debit card…. Knowledge of where you live would be important. Knowing how to light a fire, keep warm, find food and clean drinking water. The inhumanity of men to the homeless is a fear if I went through with disposing of my possessions.

An artist did do it. He crushed all of his belongings I think. It was a very powerful art ‘happening’, but what happened to him? Was he paid to do it, has he replaced things, did he survive? The problem is that in a world of thousands or millions of wonders each day, does anyone even notice.

It would be good to dispose of my belongings, to free up myself, but I’m getting too old to survive such a thing. I will have to keep at least some of my things..

Can you see a face and body?

Two eyes a nose and a mouth?

If you see the face you might be experiencing Pareidolia. It’s one of my favourite things, I love finding faces or animals in or on other objects.

That’s what people did with the stars in the skies… They could see people or creatures and called them constellations. Some constellations are the basis of the signs of the Zodiac. Different civilisations had different myths and legends, so the combinations of stars creating them will be different depending on what part of the world you live in. Even the moon is seen as a boat when it is viewed from the equator and is waxing or waning, because it looks horizontal, not vertical. And what about the man in the moon? A face seen in the moons surface made up of the different craters and seas on it.

I think Pareidolia is really interesting. I read that it helped early people notice animals that might have been camouflaged without that skill. It’s more redundant now. But still there. So if you see faces in wallpaper or bunches of flowers Pareidolia is happening!

The Owl and the Pussycat

Went to sea, in a beautiful pea green boat…

They took some money and plenty of honey, wrapped up in a five pound note….

A nonsense poem by Edward Lear, who also wrote the Dong with the luminous nose and the Yonghie Bonghie Bo. There used to be a TV show in the seventies that included these characters, but the animation was very weird and too colourful if that’s possible with the poems set to odd music, and I’m afraid it actually put me off reading them!

I also get Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll ( who wrote Alice in Wonderland etc) mixed up.

I realised this morning that I have the iconic animals sitting on my bookcase in the bedroom. They are a tiny cat made by an artist friend and an owl  I made of clay pressed into a mold. I hadn’t put two and two together before. I guess that anything can spark a chain of memories, there’s a phrase for it in semiotics, about signs and signifiers, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it!

‘Together’ today’s prompt

Today’s #bandofsketchers sketch prompted by ‘together’. This is a collection of stuff together on the chair arm. It is a was hard to decide what to draw, the prompt makes me think of groups of people, family, friends. Clearly I can’t do that. Also cats, if they were together, but our cats scatter to the four winds, unless they are play chasing each other. So I gathered a few things on the chair arm and this was the result.

Objects

A lion was waiting on a roundabout when it saw a disco ball in a hall window… The light from the sun reflected off it and made tiny stars sparkle off every surface. The magic it set off created a bronze dragon, which unfortunately was only tiny. It was seen by a bag in the shape of an owl. Which swallowed the dragon whole. The owl then grew new feathers of purple and blue wax. It flew over a lake with oriental buildings and trees. It followed an orange man walking backwards with his legs sticking through the bottom of a boat. Two people watched on in horror. Finally all the owls toy cushion friends stood and applauded as it flew in and landed quietly and quickly in the corner.

Yes that is a lot of silly words, but I’d gathered these odd photos together and wanted to describe them. Not much of a story really!

Circles, today’s USK prompt.

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I just had to find circles to draw  for today’s Stoke on Trent urban sketchers challenge. I hope ellipses count as tipped up circles. In that case there are rings, a mug, a dream catcher and a mobile in this sketch… If not I guess the dream catcher and mobile in the window count. Black ink on cartridge paper.  Next drawing due Sunday I think….

Objects

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I wanted some objects to add to my new bathroom which had been painted in a lovely sky blue. The green and gold bowl is glass made at the nearby Portmerion factory in Stoke. the cats head was from a friend, I dont know its origin. I placed it above the bowl to look like it was lapping. The blue bottles are an old medicine bottle and an old gin bottle. The yellow glass bowl came from a place called Amerton farm, the small pinky bottle with a stopper was from a jumble sale. Finally the brown and turquoise bowl was a raffle prize. The fern is one I grew before we had the bathroom done, it had to come back in. I do like the combinations of colour.

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