Spackle and Fade...

My hands are officially on both coasts! I just returned from plastering my second Aveda store. This time, my trowel took me to New England, where settlers plastered walls in lime, sand, and even used straw and cow hair to provide added strength. Bewildered by old towns like Salem and Ipswitch, in awe of seeing the old walls of Paul Revere's house, I came back with a renewed passion for all things old. I felt my ancestors hands trowel their surfaces as I gave my final touch to the clay walls.

 Our most treasured spaces have been sacrificed to the cause of the New and Clean. Even though the witch trials and revivals have long passed, we still strive for purity. Smooth and shiny building skins, disguising the badge of Wear and Time. This is an ancient habit. Colonists wore wigs, makeup, and did all sorts of tricks to appear flawless. Today, we have Botox and Bondo, to fill in where time has gouged away.

As a plaster artist, I give conscious attention to my work. When you have hand-troweled finishes, accept the fact that it will eventually get damaged. In high-traffic areas, consider giving the wall a bit more visual texture, so that when the blemish appears, it becomes part of the surface character. Also, it is helpful to select a material that is easy to repair. American Clay is my favorite pic for this. Simply, infill the nick, allow it to dry, then blend it back in with water and a plastic putty knife. Sounds similar to the way the aristocrats might have patched their faces before a promenade. :)

I wish I had a answer for us accepting our flaws as beautiful. We should take pride in ourselves and our craft. Yet, somehow we end up fighting the marks of time. Perhaps we can strive for ambivalence here and consider wabi-sabi as a ray of light. Purity in imperfection?! Hmmm. You decide.

“Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness. Wabi-sabi is ambivalent about separating beauty from non-beauty or ugliness. The beauty of wabi-sabi is in one respect, the condition of coming to terms with what you consider ugly. Wabi-sabi suggests that beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else. Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view. Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.”
― Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers