Move Your Art, So It Can Move You

           When I played at the Bluebird Cafe a couple of weeks ago, my friend (and fan) Steve
Mcnaron from Nashville Ear tagged along, as he has done in the past, and I hope he continues to do in the future. He videotapes my sets, and those of any other artists who are amenable, to post on his website. He is a great supporter of the songwriting community in Nashville.
            Steve is also a visual artist. I had seen several of his works online, but never in person until he presented me one in the parking lot of the Bluebird. He said that based on the photos of my home and surrounding property that he had seen, he thought he had the perfect painting picked out. (I'm trying not to read too much into the fact that it's a shithouse.) I showed it to my wife the next morning, and she agreed that it was very nice, and we should try to find a place to hang it. We have a small house, and a lot of art, so we had to shuffle some things around.

     We settled on a spot above the fireplace in our dining room. The Israeli watercolor that had been hanging there moved to the spot above the piano in the living room. That got us started re-thinking where everything was hung. We took a nice painting of a New York fire escape with a park in the background off the wall in the dining room, and replaced it with a fantasy print our daughter had given us, that was not getting enough eye action in a darker corner of the living room. We put the painting on a wall in our bedroom that had previously been mostly bare. It looks great there. A mandala print replaced the fantasy print in the living room.
      Suddenly, we were seeing our art again. After years of hanging in the same spots, where we had gotten so used to seeing them that we neglected to "look" at them, the art was once again coming to life in our house. My father-in-law apparently had a six-month schedule of moving art back and forth from his office to his home, in order to keep things fresh. I wish we had thought of this sooner. It's almost like having a new collection. I would recommend this approach to anyone who needs a breath of fresh air.
       So, it turns out that Steve gave us more than a painting. He gave us our art back.
       Thanks, buddy!