Pop up art – ways to add wonder to your community

I saw this on Twitter a few days ago and loved it.

Since public phones are so outdated, the phone booths in Osaka, Japan have been converted to aquariums! pic.twitter.com/pQeKfxJF25

I love the little boy looking at it with wonder. It reminds me of  last year when I was doing a ‘POP UP SHAKESPEARE’ with Alan Harman and Sammy Conway in a library in North London. It was a celebration of  Shakespeare’s birthday and we were there to entertain with monologues and sonnets. Given I have lots of Edinburgh Fringe Festival experiences of talking to unsuspecting crowds,  I  volunteered to go first and to grab the attention of the library goers milling around.

So I started singing a sad sonnet in the style of the blues. I ended up on the floor scatting whilst kneeling and looking up at an adorable little girl with thick frizzy black plaits looking back at me astonished. That may well have been her first Shakespeare experience, a crazy blonde on the floor speaking in weird tongues 😉 However I loved the fact she could see that not all adults there were behaving like adults, there was us actors talking as Macbeth, Cleopatra and Iago 😉

So this aquarium is beautiful and just shows again how pop up art always gives unexpected joy.

Seth Godin’s make art plea as part of his Icarus book launch

This excerpt is from the above link to his blog

“Here’s something you might do today: Go to this site, scroll down and find the laid-out bookmark and print it out. Take the bookmark and write on it. Write down your project, your feelings, the thing you’re making–share your art. Tell us your URL if you have one, or draw a picture if you like. And then go to the local bookstore and carefully put the bookmark in a copy of Icarus. (It’s great with me if you support your local bookstore by buying something while you’re there).

One day, someday, someone will buy the book and find your bookmark. A karmic connection will happen, and you’ll be connected to a stranger. Your art will be in the world, and perhaps one day, this stranger, this reader, this fellow traveler will continue the chain, putting her bookmark into someone else’s book.

Right now, the urgency is real. We have to create more art, create better art and build more substantial connections.”

13 minute task of the day

Make some pop up art! Lets decorate a rock!

Decide what you are going to create today to  bring a smile to those around you – I like to grow orchids and reorganising their window display is definitely art! People can see them as they pass by.

Some suggestions are:

-Bake a beautiful Cake, Decorate a pre-bought muffin with icing sugar and leaves or decorate a rock 😉 , clean up a sideboard or shelf and make it look like a spot in a gallery, repot a plant and add some ribbon to the pot, Draw on a postcard and send to a friend, do the Icarus project and decorate a bookmark downl

oad bookmark, decorate/embellish and tuck it in a book in a bookstore ,  put on an usual colour or combination of clothing and be a walking piece of art – think fashion ;-), paint your toenails and add  sequins, write a poem out of words from todays newspaper, make a collage from things you rip out from some magazines, sing a song on the tube or in your local park, quote poetry you learnt from school in the coffee shop.

*Get your materials together

*set your timer for 13 minutes

*GO! MAKE SOME ART. This is not about perfecti

on but about Popping Up and making Art 😉

*Let your ‘art’ be seen; Instagram it, leave it in

the local coffee shop, post to a friend or on Facebook

*Mission accomplished, you have made the world a brighter place today

Interview with Seth Godin on the Icarus Deception