Our house has a lot of bare walls. I think that we don’t know how to decorate. One thing that we’ve thought we could do is get some art to hang around. As it turns out, art is hard.
Recently Abby’s elementary school held a student art exhibition. They’ve been creating art all year based on classical works. One of the artists they were emulating was Piet Mondrian. I knew of Mondrian from his strange paintings of primary-colored straight lines and boxes, but I did not know of anything else he had painted. When I saw his “Grey Tree” exemplar among the 2nd-grade recreations, I was struck by it in a way that I had not thought about art before.
Of course, I can’t hang that painting in my house, and it seems kind of absurd to get a poster reproduction of the thing to hang in my livingroom over the fireplace. So apart from Abby’s faithful reproductions of classical art, what can I put on display in the house?
Some days after the art show, we stopped at the mall to look in some of the art shops for some decorations. The Chester County Art Association has some kind of workshop set up in the two-unit place that Victoria’s Secret moved out of. They not only host classes in there, but also sell some of the artists paintings.
Unfortunately, on the day we visited, the store was closed. We looked through the barred store gates at some of the art inside. In the doorway were these people-sized people cutouts of wood with barcode-like black and white bars painted on their entire surface. A whole group of them. This is certainly not the kind of thing I would want to have as a showpiece in my home. Thankfully, they were labeled, “NFS” (Not For Sale). I wondered idly what the artist would do with them when people got bored of the “we are all barcodes” message.
Afterwards, we trekked to the other corner of the mall, where there is a Deck the Halls store. This store sells prints that you can have framed. I’ll summarize with: This store blows.
I guess if you’re a college student and you want so posters of beer and classic pinup posters to frame for your dorm, this is the place to go. If you’re into that pop art like Michael Parkes’ Gargoyles, then this is the place to go. But I simply can’t see myself hanging that sort of thing in my house.
I guess I don’t know what I’m looking for and I expect to know it when I see it. The problem is that I haven’t seen anything yet, and I’m not exactly sure where to look.
I’ve been in a few people’s homes who have art on the walls, and it just feels right. I want my living space to feel that way, too. I’ve had enough of these bare walls.
