I wish I could claim to be a tidy person. Clean, yes. Tidy, not so much. I call myself “organizationally challenged”. When I’m in the midst of an art project, I don’t even SEE the mess I’m creating around me. And yet, the art I make is so much about how everything comes together. It’s not “tidy” that I’m looking for, but it’s a sense of each component belonging in relationship to the rest of the piece. Flow.

As I was – yes – tidying up today, I noticed how some of the arrangements of my random pieces of cloth appealed to me: just how they had fallen. No thought attended their placement.

I flashed back to when I was in grad school. During that time, I ended up being exposed to art I never would have chosen to view. For example, there was this one afternoon spent watching a film by a Fluxus movement artist shot in – was it the 1960’s? For it seemed like an interminable amount of time, I watched little bursts of wind blow trash around on a sidewalk in NYC. BORING was my take away.

But then, only a few days later, I was sitting outside a library waiting for a ride and I admit: I was mesmerized. The most inconsequential bit of movement – a person appearing then passing – or the plunk-plunk of rain drops falling next to me. My sensitivity to the slightest movement or sound from my still point was heightened. It was all vivid, all significant, and all by chance.

That darn film had affected how I viewed the world. Now, even as I’m tidying up, what’s this? Oh … unintentional art. A gift of the moment.

Thank you Fluxus.