smibbo | more fascinating memories... (Reply)

Ever since I can remember having my own room, I've decorated the walls. Mostly, I'd do collage, pictures, posters, phrases and fragments of conversation. At one point, when I moved out of the house and lived with roommates, I started painting directly onto the walls. The first room, I started with psalm 69 ("The lord is my shepard, I shall not want...") painted in broad strokes all around the room. Soon, visitors were adding interesting phrases to the walls for me and I put up many pictures and song lyrics I liked. The room itself became a kind of art. I liked that very much and it seemed to make people curious and happy to see it. I made a rule that every visitor had to write something when entering my room for the first time. I had every type of art implement (except oil paints) and was always fascinated to see what people would come up with. A friend got drunk one night and wrote the entirety of "Rapture" by Blondie (not my favorite Blondie tune but eh..) which was the first and only time the ceiling was touched.

Each new place I moved to was decorated like this. When I moved out, i'd simply paint over it. I believe people usually photographed the rooms before I repainted but I don't think I ever got a copy of any of those photos. That was okay with me, I kind of liked the impermenance of it.

By the time I moved to Philadelphia, the method was fairy set for me: start with song lyrics painted in broad brush - sometimes so large you couldn't tell they were words - and fill in the spaces around the lyrics with pictures, artwork, phrases, photographs etc. I used all the colors I could in each space but I tried to keep a consistancy and often ended up with an overall hue that dominated. The contiuity of the wall would usually be a concern of mine but I never enforced any particular rule about how other people added to the wall.

Since moving to this house, I haven't decorated a wall at all. I'm not sure why... perhaps it's because I share the house with other people and I don't feel like the space is truly "mine" or perhaps it's because I'm married and feel similarly about imposing my art upon myhusband (although I'm sure he wouldn't mind) but I think it's most likely because the walls already have decoration upon them; there's wallpaper here. I've never lived anywhere with wallpaper that has pictures on it. I'm not sure I could start or maintain a mural that could incorporate the stupid wallpaper pictures and I know I couldn't cover them up (too predominate) Even the landlord said I could feel free to paint over the wallpaper but somthing keeps me from it (too much work?)

Then there's the "normality" thing. Our bedroom looks "normal" to me. Mundane, typical, kind of dumb (wallpaper has a cowboy theme - ick) and definitely boring. But there's a security to it... I feel very safe and unpressured looking at those stupid walls. Making a mural would change that... it would make it not just "mine" and reflective of me, it also would make the bedroom a secret. It would be like hiding your hobby... the rest of the house is mostly normally decorated and fairly nice, just very very typical. In all my other places, I put other artwork and mini-collages around the whole place, my bedroom was just where the intensely personal mural would be. But all in all, it would reflect an overall artistic "feel" to it. Making a mural here in this house would be weird as there's nothing else around that even hints at what I used to acheive with my collages.

I do miss it though.