By Meghan E. Gattignolo
The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center is happy to represent many artistic identities in Clarksville, as well as being a bastion for history and fantastic family times! To this end, celebrating creativity in all its beautiful forms is an important part of why we love our local museum.
But when you look inside your own life, how much art do you see? From moment to moment, it’s easy to take mundane beauty for granted. We need to get to this place on time, or make sure that task gets done, and enjoying life is not the priority.
How much of your life could be transformed into art? How much of your day-to-day paper trail and monotonous tasks could tell the story of your life to someone else?
seeing the stars in you by Sophia Macias (Eisenbart), Acrylic, 5′ x 5′.
Journals into Stories
The most obvious form of turning the everyday into art is to read your diary. Getting our thoughts and feelings down about our time on the planet is essential to remember our highs and lows. Not every day is perfect, but all the bits and bobs that bother us might strike a chord later once we’ve allowed ourselves some space. The hardest day of our life could make a spectacular horror story, or a thoughtful memoir about learning from mistakes.
There’s more to journaling than just our private diaries, though. Our planners, date books, calendar entries, the notes we jot down, the texts we send – even the recipes we save in our search engine bookmarks – these are all important pieces that tell our life’s story, and all potential raw materials for creating art. Don’t believe me? Author Tracey Moberly turned twelve years of text messages into an impressive autobiography.
Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/crumpled-papers-and-sticky-notes-5185074/
The Clutter on the Dashboard
You don’t think the messy trails you leave throughout your day have anything to say about who you are? Our cars especially are full of life. Americans spend approximately an hour in the car every day. It’s a fair bet the figure can be doubled for Clarksville’s drivers, many of whom commute to Nashville for work or spend an hour waiting to pick the kids up from school, – or try to get the most laps around Rhonda.
We live 7-14 hours per week in our cars, and none of us have the time to clean it all before it piles. The crumpled receipt in the cup holder, the dirty trampoline socks on the car floor, and the pile of books in your backseat all reveal important parts about our life’s core events.
Currently exhibiting her work at the museum, artist Sophia Macias (Eisenbart) has collected the pieces of her life – like receipts and ticket stubs – what she calls “proof of life,” and created massive collages from them. Sophia then creates paintings of those collages with vivid colors that speak to her heritage. These are stunning works of art that tell the story of who Sophia is. Read her personal essay in which she discusses her process in the most recent edition of Second & Commerce magazine here.
Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash
Objects on the Counter
The kitchen counter – including, of course, that junk drawer – is quick to fill with random objects. Not just kitchen appliances, but notepads, tools, teapots, potholders, our kids’ collections of soda tabs, and that one thing we never use but just can’t bring ourselves to throw away because we might need it someday. At some point we know we’ll put everything away, but not right now. We have dinner to make, and the kids need to eat before it gets a minute later.
A different kind of clutter appears in our home than in our car. This is the comfortable mess, the things we use the most, the stuff we stop noticing, and the gadgets we think we need to function. These also paint a picture of the kind of life we live.
Following the pandemic shutdown of 2020, many artists stuck at home had to seek inspiration in the objects they were surrounded by 24/7. In the years since, the Museum has exhibited wonderfully imaginative work from artists creating during this time. One of the first artists to reveal pandemic work at The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center was Juliette Aristides in 2021 with her show Life’s Work.
Juliette is a classically trained artist who works exquisitely with oil paint. The pieces she made depicting objects from around her house are gorgeous. I remember being particularly awed by how the objects in her paintings reflected light. Just check out this previous blog post written about the exhibit and see for yourself how delicious those tomatoes look.
what about us? By Sophia Macias (Eisenbart), Acrylic, 6′ x 6′
And, see for yourself how a person’s everyday minutiae can become fine art with Sophia Eisenbart: Collected Moments, downstairs in the Jostens Gallery at The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center now until October 20th.
When you take the time to breathe and notice how much of your life can actually be an inspiration for creation, you give yourself a wonderful feeling.
Meghan E. Gattignolo is a freelance writer and longtime Clarksville, TN resident. She loves to obsess about historical subjects and annoy her family daily with unsolicited random facts. Meghan holds a History B.A. from Austin Peay State University and lives in town with her husband and two children.