#11 Our Life as Art
November 2, 2024
The opening of our family exhibition MAKESHIFT at the North Wall Gallery in Oxford last week is a perfect lead-in to this week’s theme – how I – we – have expressed our life through our art.
Most of the artworks shown here are indeed at the Oxford show, along with dozens more – we’ve covered one very long gallery wall with art from our home. So to see a visual representation of our last 25 years – and know what our living room looks like – visit!
Collection 1: The Life as Art gallery made for my dad’s 70th birthday in 2014 / My family making a fire on North Beach, CA circa 2018 / My mom and dad in their miniature gallery / Bea, Mila, Ralph and me at MAKESHIFT last week, with Mila’s paintings behind
Ralph and I will be at MAKESHIFT again this Monday 4th November from 6.30-8pm at a special opening in support of art therapy charity AT The Bus. All welcome – please lmk if you’re coming.
It did occur to me that the conventional use of the word Makeshift is not the most complimentary – at best defined as ‘acting as an interim and temporary measure’, at worst ‘temporary and of low quality, but used because of a sudden need.‘
WAIT, wot?! I had thought of makeshift as a desirable trait, shaping your life by improvising energetically with what you have at hand. Maybe those discouraging definitions say more about society’s priorities – certainty, stability, moving along a predictable path…
Collection 2: Me in my Ralph party mask / Various Ralph things: His map of Cerf Island in the Seychelles where we lived in 1999 / Two Glass Cathedral portraits of him making giant art, in miniature in art and irl – “Bold” and “Land of Giants” / Introducing art monster Lyle – you’ll hear a lot more about Lyles when I dive into the California adventure in a few weeks time.
Anyway, that has not been our path. No clean progression along any trajectories (not to say we haven’t tried!!) rather a concoction, a following of intuition and dreams, making and grabbing opportunities. And the more challenging things have been, the more we’ve had to adapt, practising those make-shifting muscles. We’re buff!
Collection 3: Is there more to say about our connection to Africa? Yes! One of Ralph’s cartoon portraits made in the Botswana bush / Life as Art showing our family’s travels / More Botswana portraits – the 4 of us on top of the old Landy – Ralph looking for lions, me looking for birds, Mila and Bea non-plussed teenagers (just for fun! They’ve always been into our Africa travels) / Mila’s portrait of my mother-in-law Carol / My sister-in-law Nicky and Carol in their element / One of Ralph’s maps showing the movement of elephants to a water hole / Nicky amongst elephants / My niece Jamie communing with elephants. My family sure does like elephants!
A brief digression
To an extent, all self-employed people have to embrace the Makeshift mentality, or go get a real job. :) I remember when Covid lockdowns struck, at first we thought us self-employed people were ‘befok’ (work it out), but then we realised we may be well-placed to navigate this new unknown – as we’ve always had to be adaptable, like alley cats, it’s the only way we had survived until then, Covid or no Covid! I do like to think of us as alley cats.
Collection 4: Five happy places: Mila and her feral foster dog Honey / Bea swimming with whalesharks in Madagascar / My twin Sue swimming wherever, whenever / Nephew Gabriel by the NY metro map / Sister-in-law Milly on Hampstead Heath with doggy Dexter
So that’s my family (and other animals, for sure!) but really, I guess all my work can be classed under a similar banner – capturing so many lives in the form of art. Definitely more than a thousand of you, maybe two…!
Ok, off to finish off another few…
Bye for now, Lisa
P.S. We’re more than halfway through the 20 year project. Thanks for sticking with me x