truly functional art

Only over the years, as I've had an opportunity to reflect on Dad's artistic experiments have I realized how similar my artistic sensibilities are to his, how much I took from him.

Dad sought to find art in everything and anything - to look upon things with "artistic eyes", a continuing sense of wonder. Sometimes this meant little more than artistic jokes - attempts at abstract expressionism which really were no more than blobs of paint randomly splashed on canvas along with a playful "I can do that too" wink.

But at other times, as in his soapings, what found expression was a desire to find "art" in our daily experience, to make the everyday into something artistic, yet still playful. Dad really didn't care what type of soap he used, but at one point he decided he wanted it in many colors. As a bar of soap got close to being used up he'd attach it by a bit of squeezing to a new bar. This usually meant that the old bar would get used up totally, so instead he saved the almost finished bars and pressed them all together, constructing new, multi-colored bars. These got used, but usually not fully used up. Instead they were saved, artifacts of an attempt to extract the aesthetic from the day-to-day. When I stumble across them I'm often tempted to bring them into the shower and use them - after all, that's what they're for. But of course then they wouldn't continue to permit me to reflect on them.