Jan+Ott

= Jan's Page (seriously? This is the biggest font I can use?) =

One of things we talked about at the delightful meeting at Susan's yesterday was saying what we are interested in pursuing as our creative outlet for the year. For me, I'd like to get back into calligraphy and explore paper art of all types. I'm particularly interested in origami, and in paper folding/sculpting that produces 3-D art forms. I'm also fascinated in word art of many types, but especially of (it took me awhile to find examples - I finally tried Escher calligraphy) caliigraphic word reversals and mirror images. This gives some good examples:

http://www.ambigramme.com/english/talents/talents-authors-artists.html

Apparently, they are also called ambigrammes. Who knew?

The other riff we went off on was the guerrilla theme. Someone mentioned knitting, and I thought of guerrilla knitting (also called yarn bombing where people knit around objects (some as large as a bus). We went off on people painting eyes on objects, then other guerrilla themes. A friend of mine in Olympia every May Day makes a bunch of hanging sayings, mostly blessings or short spring themed poems, writes them on colored paper, pastes these onto strips of paper bags, punches holes in the bottom and one on top to put raffia and beads through on the bottom and a string to hang it with on top. Early May Day, she goes around town and hangs them on trees. They last however long they do, but they are reminder of beauty in the world. Gita has a little note to herself by her back door - it says "Is it beautiful? Does it bring me pleasure? Is it useful? If not, get rid of it."

I would like to bring beauty into the world, guerrilla style. Another friend and I once thought about creating labyrinths in the middle of intersections in the middle of the night. We had gotten pretty good at putting them on floors. I had one painted in my office on the floor, and I helped lay two at my church (the first was removed when they switched out the tile), so we knew we could create a template of sorts and do it in a hurry. It's one of those things I still think would be fun to do.