aesthetics of joy

It doesn’t get more prosaic than the clothesline. Once a household staple, now replaced in most of the US with washer/dryer units, they’re a rare sight for many Americans. Yet go abroad and they’re still ubiquitous, used either by necessity or by desire, for a more eco-friendly life or the wonderful feeling of clothes dried in the sunshine.

I’ve always thought that clotheslines are like impromptu garlands. Though they are explicitly functional objects, as are the items that hang on them, they imbue a space with a celebratory feeling. They add color and draw the eye upwards. This is especially true in cities, where clotheslines festoon alleyways, swooping from window to window up several stories.

On clotheslines, the clothes themselves become more than just pants or t-shirts; unified by color and drape, they are more like flags of different shapes. This is a great reminder of how grouping things together changes how we perceive them. And you can see some ideas of curation in the launderer, making choices about color adjacencies, patterns, and scale. In effect, this person, the unseen clothes-washer, is a designer of public space, changing how neighbors and tourists experience the buildings, streets, and passageways between them.

I spotted these particular clothesline photos in the Instagram feed of my friend Sheena Matheiken; she has a wonderful, joyful eye and I had to share them with you. Clotheslines seem emblematic of the idea that joy is in your prism, in how you choose to see the world. You could see them as intrusions in the landscape, objects of toil or clutter. Or you can relish their quotidian beauty, the way the light shines through them, and the charming absurdity of seeing a stranger’s underwear fluttering in the open breeze. Anaïs Nin famously said, “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

I think I see so much joy in the world because I choose to see it that way. Some people think that if you’re looking so much for joy, you’ll have high expectations that are often disappointed. But I don’t believe it works that way. Being joyful by nature, and by intention, I find it jumps out at me. I don’t actually have to look very hard; it finds me.

What are your “clotheslines?” What are your favorite examples of everyday things that become joyful when you really look at them?

Images: Sheena Matheiken

I came home last Sunday evening to sounds of laughter and the smell of woodsmoke coming up from the backyard. It was one of those frigid nights we’ve been having, the kind of night when a balaclava seems to make sense for something other than a bank robbery. I pressed my nose up to the window to look outside, and it sent a chill right to the root of my spine. But then I saw it: first the flicker of the campfire, illuminating a handful of bundled revelers holding sticks with marshmallows. And then, squinting into the dim light, something even better: a slick of ice, and boys on skates.

This is a Brooklyn backyard we’re talking about here, about as small a patch of real estate as you could imagine. And yet, faced with an endless stretch of freezing temperatures, my neighbors decided to make their own fun. They flooded a patch of the concrete yard with a hose, let it freeze, and had their own ice-skating rink (barely larger than a dining table, mind you), their own winter wonderland.

You might ask what this has to do with design. It has everything to do with design. This is people altering their environment, using the tools at hand, to create joy for themselves and others. We often say: design loves constraints. And this is a brilliant design under the constraints of winter in a dense northeastern city, a way to be outside and together when the mood gravitates towards being inside in solitude. It’s a beautifully aesthetic moment too—light, movement, warmth, the sweetness of marshmallows, and the small swooping curves of skaters on their tiny rink—an oasis in what can often be a bleak time.

Make your own fun, this winter or whenever. Make your own joy.

The Instagram feed @thiswildidea has been giving me a lot of joy lately. Have you seen it? Photographer Theron Humphrey’s project Maddie on Things isn’t new, but his photos of coonhound Maddie continue to be charming and inventive, and Maddie must be the most dexterous and amenable dog I’ve seen. Maddie deadpans with the best of them, making the photos delightfully absurd.

Maddie’s success provides further evidence that we relish animals in ridiculous situations. The web is full of examples, but the phenomenon actually dates back much further, to the nineteenth century and photographer Harry Whittier Frees’s portraits of kittens in human scenarios. (And who knows, probably it’s even older than that.) Surely there’s a cuteness factor here, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. There’s something special in the way that projects like this ritualize surprise. They give us a formula which sets our expectations, but each installment disrupts them in new ways. Each photo follows a pattern, yet also pushes a boundary. It is playful and endearing and embarrassing — and we love Maddie for her game willingness to go along for the ride.

Not to write cuteness off entirely, though. Cuteness is at root an aesthetic of vulnerability, and nothing is more vulnerable than the willingness to let someone put you in absurd situations. There’s sometimes a fine line between affection and humiliation, and it is a very sweet kind of companionship to be this loved and this trusting. Innocence by definition entails blind faith, and no matter how jaded we become over time, we seem to take a vicarious thrill in innocence and the way children and animals simply trust their welfare to our imperfect selves.

To be absurd, to be part of an absurd event, is also a kind of release. I think on some level we empathize with Maddie’s readiness to be part of someone else’s story, to be medium and subject, and to take on these strange challenges created for her. In any situation where we give up control and surrender to an experience (Philippe Halsman’s jump photos come to mind), we open up a new possibility to surprise ourselves. Self-surprise is one of the greatest joys, when we discover some new lightness or freedom within ourselves. Perhaps the greatest joy of participating in absurdity is permission: to be ridiculous, to be out of character, or simply to take ourselves less seriously.

Images: ThisWildIdea
See more of Maddie, here.

In the busyness of the holidays, sometimes it’s hard to find time to stop, breathe, and take note of joyful moments. Slow down for a minute with some tiny things:

Artist Dalton Ghetti carved this amazing alphabet on pencils. Odd but lovely. {via Odd Stuff Magazine}

Many small pleasures beat a few larger ones. (More reason to indulge in tiny sweets!)

Bees have feelings, too. New research in Scientific American suggests these remarkable little insects have an emotional life.

Silly little art project, low-fi and delightful: Single Lane Superhighway. Go draw a car. It makes you feel a part of something. {via @alexandrapulver}

“It was like finding little gems.” Photographer David Liitschwager captured all the living creatures within a cubic foot in a variety of different climates to draw attention to the abundance of denizens of a swath of habitat that “could fit in your lap.” National Geographic. {via The Guardian}

Stay sane this pre-holiday week. Try not to rush through, but find the beauty in the craziness, and savor it!

Every week my inbox is filled with more joyful images, events, and links than I can possibly write about. So I’m toying around with the idea of a weekly or semi-weekly collection of joyful links. Let me know what you think.

Rainbow shredder: wouldn’t it be amazing if all your bills came out like this? By Chrissie Macdonald, photograph by John Short, {via Birdwatching, a very cool site featuring the work of female graphic designers}

Slate: Why are car paint colors so boring? {via @mimiochun}

Guardian: Northern lights appearing much further south this year than usual – amazing photos. (I’ll be on the hunt for these in Iceland this new year’s eve…)

A team of researchers has developed a 360 degree panoramic ball camera. I love how this adds a playful gesture to a functional object. The camera takes a full panoramic photo when thrown up in the air – must be seen to be believed. {via @brainpicker}

And finally, AoJ was selected as a Weekly Best by the beautifully visual news reading app Flud last week!

I’m in Portland this weekend, and will be joyspotting here. What shouldn’t I miss?

Omhu is a Danish company with a mission to support people’s changing needs throughout life with design. The name means “with great care” in Danish, and that’s evident in the selections, from elegant hot water bottles to eyeglass cases to their signature walking sticks – everything is selected to make life with impairments a little more beautiful. They write:

We started Omhu after searching in vain for well-designed products for relatives and friends who needed help with simple tasks such as walking, bathing, or reaching overhead… Omhu celebrates good design because it’s life-enhancing, and it’s fun. By creating more exciting choices of things that help, we hope we can also help change the way people feel about aging and ability. Because everyone’s getting older – even you!

They also say that “beauty heals,” which I think is an important idea. When you think about being diagnosed with a long-term illness, it’s rarely the aesthetics you think about. But suddenly being dependent on cold metal walkers, hospital beds, and other disability aids usually has a dampening effect on the mood, and I think we could improve quality of live significantly with more thoughtful consideration of the emotions in design. Imagine how unenthusiastic people would be about wearing eyeglasses if they were styled like the prosthetics they are, rather than fashion accessories. Color, texture, and form can quietly console us about our condition, as well as inspire us to take better care of ourselves.

The walking sticks, which I first wrote about in a column for Core77, are now on sale for $112 (regularly $149) at Fab, a new online flash sale site for design. The sale ends in two days, so if this is something you’re considering, don’t wait!

I’ve taken many plane rides before, but never seen a landscape quite like this. I recently stumbled upon this article showing Holland’s tulip fields from above. Can you believe there’s a landscape that actually looks like this? It’s like agricultural earth art. I had to dig up some more images for inspiration. Let’s hope all these April showers will bring us some, well, you know…

Images: livetowander, Daily Mail, powerfocusfotografie, Daily Mail, Samuel_Leo, _Darek, heavenuphere.

Matt sent me these whimsical images of public structures “fixed” with legos. The pieces are done by artist Jan Vormann, in an attempt to “support Mayor Bloomberg in his everyday-struggle to make this city even more amazing!”

Between these and the precious potholes I featured a couple of weeks ago, I’m starting to see a theme around the idea of “joyful repair.” Add to these some of the initiatives at Droog’s takeover of Governor’s island last fall, such as Heleen Klopper’s Woolfiller, and there really seems to be a pattern. I see this as an emerging desire to salvage damaged things, to fill in gaps and holes with something beautiful, whimsical, and colorful. Of course, these are not serious attempts at repair (Woolfiller excepted), but they get us to pay more attention to our environment, and the condition of the world around us, in a joyful way. There’s something compelling about the motivation behind the work — the need to make something whole, and not just whole, but somehow better and brighter than it was. These pieces suggest that a repaired thing can be not just as good as, but better than a new thing, and for me, this is what makes these provocations go beyond humor and novelty to be truly, deeply joyful.

Spotted this installation near the corner of 33rd and Lex a few weeks ago. Despite the bitter cold, people kept stopping to play. Does anyone know whose work this is?

Yes, the Georgia O’Keefe show at the Whitney was joyful, but this magenta-haired lady in the lobby stole the spotlight this weekend. Pink hair on a teenager is ho-hum, but the same shocking hue on a more mature subject is a delightful surprise.

I just hope when I get older I have similar confidence to not always act my age!