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Wednesday 30 April 2014

Art Abandonment

What does the title of this blog suggest to you?

When I first heard about this a few years ago, I was intrigued. I was surprised that many artists all over the world are engaged in this. They abandon their art in various places for others to find and keep. Essentially it is free art for someone to find. Art Abandonment is a type of "pay it forward" activity to make someone's day a little happier.

This movement was started by artists but you don't have to be an artist to create something and leave it behind somewhere. Up until now, I've mostly made art for people I know. Sometimes I send little watercolour postcards through the mail without an envelope. I often wonder what the people in the post office think when one of these postcards goes through. Or I will decorate the outside of an envelope or package before mailing it. But the idea of making some art for a stranger to pick up is just really neat. We don't know how it will affect that person but we do know that if we were to find a piece of art, it would make our day! I think that with all the horrible stuff going on in the world, this activity is just what we need.

Some artists will plant a small garden somewhere, or decorate a bus shelter with party favours, or do a chalk painting on a sidewalk somewhere, or hang folded paper cranes in a tree. Some artists use natural items such as sticks, rocks, moss, arranged on the ground to make a picture.

Last year, a group of people from our church got together to make small canvas paintings to abandon in our neighbourhood with invitations to our church services. I think all the art works were picked up by people who may eventually answer our invitation.

This Art Abandonment movement is so big, it has a Facebook group. Artists can post photos of their abandoned art and those who find the art can send a message via the Facebook group. The idea is to keep your identity a secret. Often we will not know who picked up our art and that's OK too.




These are two little pieces of  collage art that I abandoned a few weeks ago with a tag attached to them explaining that this was their lucky day and they just found a piece of art they could keep or give away or just leave for someone else. If they kept it or gave it away, they were asked to post a note on the Facebook page.

Here is where I abandoned them.

Abandoned at the Hairdresser
Abandoned at the Dentist
The piece below was made from the small painting I did in the Netherlands. I cut it up in strips and mixed the strips up gluing them down to a black background. I haven't abandoned this one yet. Still thinking on a location.


 Here below is another post card I made from two paintings I did on scraps of watercolour paper (I never throw good watercolour paper out). I glued them to a piece of thin cardboard added a piece of ribbon and some glitter. Instead of leaving this artwork somewhere, I'm going to mail it in one of the many postage paid envelopes I got in the mail that I never use and send it to the address on the outside of the envelope. Imagine how surprised the Data Entry person will be to receive this special gift!



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