Tulips
Marlies Merk Najaka
Photo by Geri Bauer Photographics, Inc.

Finally, finally, my tulips are peeking out of the cold ground. It has been a very cold winter in Madison, Wisconsin. This year for Christmas, I received seven hand-knitted scarves as gifts! Six of which were actually made by the friends who gave them to me. I thought, “Something is going on here.” It seems that more and more of my overworked, stressed-out friends are pursuing various forms of creativity, from cooking soups and stews, baking bread, making furniture in their basements, or knitting glorious scarves.

Psychologist Carl Rogers calls attention to the “desperate social need” for creativity in contemporary life. Creativity suggests an openness to experience. It means a lack of rigidity in concepts, beliefs, and perceptions. It means a tolerance for ambiguity where ambiguity exists. He says, “In a world of increasingly complex stresses, our health and our sanity require that we learn how to live lives that are genuinely creative.”

I believe we are intuitively turning to traditions of handcrafting and creating useful things as a means to counter the enormous weight of all that is manufactured and packaged in our lives. Craft is creative resistance – the equivalent of making our own hamburgers to spite McDonald’s!

Clear and Cane Vase
Robert Dane

I’m fighting a battle against anonymous clutter. That’s the cookie-cutter stuff that fills our lives to the point where we no longer notice what we surround ourselves with.

The Industrial Revolution and mass production brought good things to many people as factories poured out consumer goods at affordable prices, but it was not an unalloyed blessing. We have paid a high price for its contributions. Variety was sacrificed to the efficiencies that attend making many copies of the same thing.

Let’s declare a counter-revolution to the Industrial Revolution! If keeping up with the Joneses was a benchmark of the style imposed by mass production, what we are now seeing is something more introspective. The Joneses are fine, and they should do their thing to their heart’s content. But each of us has different, complicated psychic needs and tastes. So now what we need to do is look inward first, instead of looking next door.

My current psychic need: a beautiful vase to welcome the daffodils that are getting ready to bloom in my back yard. Not the $10 vase that clutters my shelf of vases, but the really special one that is worthy of the gift natures bestows on me at this time of year.

School and Trees, Scotland
Dan Burkholder

Balance. It seems as if I’m on an endless quest for balance – in my life, my relationships, my diet(!). It strikes me that some of my favorite artwork provides a much-needed balance to my sometimes out-of-kilter world, and this may be the reason I return to certain pieces over and over again.

In Taoist thought, balance is the ultimate goal of the universe, thus the familiar yin-yang symbol. The dictionary defines balance as “a weighing device consisting of a horizontal beam with equal weights on each end.”

So, when I yearn for more balance, I contemplate Dan Burkholder’s exquisite photograph of a school and trees in Scotland. This piece, along with a number of other works by favorite artists, breathe a calmness that envelopes me.

Matisse said that “What I dream of is an art of balance.” This is my spring wish for all of us, an art of balance.

When people ask me for decorating tips, the first thing I talk about is color. Color is such a powerful element in our lives, and I believe we must slake our thirst for it on a regular basis.

This can take many forms, from the delphinium blue scarf that perks up a brown suit to the geranium red pillows thrown on a white sofa. I really admire people who push color limits in their homes – people who will paint a wall slate blue to highlight a beautiful sculpture and print placed in front of it.

These are the brave souls who fight for what they believe in, and fire the interior designer if he or she disagrees. Be brave this spring, and light up your world with color!