Ellen Silverman was picnicking with family and friends in Riverside Park in New York City when she saw some folks nearby serenely sitting at a pop-up picnic table, which had they’d unfurled out of a case in just a few moves. From Ellen’s not-terribly-comfortable vantage point sitting on a blanket on the ground (which was…
Read MoreOne week after we posted Anni Albers words about “listening to the materials”, we found this quote by sculptor Ulrich Rückriemon on the great art blog Rolu: “my basic principle is: i start from an idea and from the material. it is not fixed which of the two comes in the first place. for me,…
Read MoreLiz Massey of Creative Liberty blog featured an interview called with Sally in her April e-newsletter. Check it out here to learn how ‘the improvised life’ came about, and Sally’s rant-ette on the creative process, how cooking relates to improvising, and the benefits of adopting an improvisational frame of mind… Here’s an excerpt: What advice…
Read MoreMANY years ago, when we barely knew who Anni Albers was, we clipped a quote of hers from a magazine, and have had it on our fridge ever since. It is faded and yellowed, but resonates as strongly as ever: “Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to…
Read MoreCherry, apple blossoms and dogwood will soon be making their appearance, so Spring is a fine time to practice ikebana, the minimalist art of flower arranging that originated in Japan. As with wabi-sabi, although it looks simple, it has complex philosophical, even spiritual underpinnings. Ikebana” is from the Japanese ikeru (生ける?, “to place, to arrange,…
Read MoreCharles McFarlane, a Junior at the Rudolf Steiner school, is an avid scholar of 20th Century American social and military history. He recently sent us images he’s collected from his research that he thought would resonate with ‘the improvised life’. In an email he wrote: “Necessity is often the mother of invention. This is no…
Read MoreThe Interventionist’s Toolkit, Mimi Zeiger’s long and illuminating essay in Design Observer, tracks the effect the recession has had on inspiring frugal, improvisational strategies for urban spaces around the world. When there’s no money for traditional architecture projects,” Provisional, Opportunistic, Ubiquitous, and Odd Tactics in Guerilla and DIY Practice and Urbanism” take root. We’ve excerpted the…
Read MoreOne of the most compelling holiday trees we’ve seen in a public space is Yoko Ono‘s Wish Tree, versions of which have been installed around the world. She conceived of the idea in 1996 – though it’s actually an a very old practice – and it continues to reverberate. People are invited to write their wish…
Read MoreWabi sabi is a Japanese way of appreciating the beauty of impermanence and imperfection. Plum blossoms, the theme of many great Japanese poems and paintings, are a perfect expression of wabi sabi: they are beautiful, fragrant and hardy, but they only last for a few days. When you focus your heart on plum blossoms you…
Read MoreWe had just finished writing the post on Laughter Yoga when we remembered an interview punk rocker Patti Smith gave to The New York Times Magazine. She outlined her personal “smile therapy,” evolved to ease the pain of a rough life. “Do you ever feel lonely?” the interviewer asked. “Sometimes the pain still — the…
Read MoreAs much as we’re fans of smart phones, we can’t live without blank notebooks for writing down some interesting thing we saw or need to remember, or notes for helping us organize our day. We’re always on the lookout for cheap, well-designed notebooks that are a pleasure to use AND shift our thinking slightly. We…
Read MoreWe’ve just added this image to our file called “Bad Ideas”: ideas that look great, but practically speaking, are impossible to maintain. Most seem like a good idea for about a minute, until you try imagine the harsh realities of living with the them (which is our test for anything we put in our home…)…
Read MoreA few weeks ago, we wrote about the artist Tom Sachs, whose amazing studio was featured in The Selby. When Todd Selby asked Sachs “What are the ten rules of your studio?” Number Ten was: “creativity is the enemy”. It is also the subject of an artwork Sachs created. Then, a reader wrote us an…
Read MoreAlthough the title of this video is Jessica’s ‘Daily Affirmation’, we see it as a video of a little kid counting blessings. Not only does she list the stuff she has, she really LOVES it. Her fierce, slightly-playing-to-the-camera soliloquy is quite a celebration of the GREAT ordinary. We find that counting blessings, though seemingly New-Agey,…
Read MoreRecently at You Have Been Here Sometime, we found two really great posts (among a lot of good stuff): The first: a post called A Possible Yellow with two paintings and and interior that use various yellows: POSSIBLE yellows to consider for …where? ….a room?….a sign?….a dress…the side of a building….? We love the idea of…
Read MoreLast week, we sent out a call for help in creating a tagline for ‘the improvise life’ and were knocked out by the response we got, both as Comments and as emails: an amazingly wonderful and wide array of descriptors and points of view + some disagreement (which we embrace). Pamela Hovland, who has been…
Read More‘the improvised life’ needs a tagline on its HomePage so newcomers who jump onto the site with no introduction can get the gist quickly, and find their way more easily. We’ve been mulling possibilities for a while now and ask for your help in figuring out which of the phrases below describes the site best.…
Read MoreMaria Robledo sent this photo from her iPhone with a short, expressive email: “Holton served these cheeries w the empty glass for the pits . Liked the improvised moment” We like the improvised moment, too and the fun, useful little solutions that mysteriously come… We’ve noticed that once we started thinking about the idea of…
Read MoreThis weekend, public radio’s The Splendid Table will be airing host Lynne Rosetto Kasper‘s interview with Sally about modular kitchen cabinets. Sally has been an inadvertent proponent of the European practice of owning your kitchen, installing it in a rental apartment and taking it with you to your next space. Years ago, she designed a…
Read MoreAlastair Heseltine is a Canadian artist who makes art and objects by interweaving wood (he especially loves willow). We were knocked out by his woodpile and by his artist’s statement; we don’t know when we’ve seen one that said so much in so few words: “I am a sculptor working with mixed media relating to…
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