Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Ephemeral Art


When I was much younger I came across an article about a group of people who made ephemeral art – art that took a day to make – perhaps patterns on the sand at a beach – and then was washed away,  like it had never been.  (a great current example is the work of Jim Denevan

At the time,  I was baffled.  Who would want to spend a day doing something spectacular and beautiful only to have it wash away?  This article was so old, it was before the internet; you couldn’t even get viral pictures of it! 


But I’m older now and I can see it as the perfect metaphor that it is – life is ephemeral art, we are here so briefly, and our task is to make something beautiful, even though it may not last, even though we may not finish it.  The doing matters as much as the completion.  Now there is something about ephemeral art that moves me to tears.    And of course now we have the internet, so we can share these images, let others see the beauty, and hold on to the ephemeral a little longer… 

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