Participate in Abandoning

For about five years, there has been a grass roots movement for artists to abandon their artworks.  I have written about it before when I first began doing it as a form of guerrilla art back in 2011.  I continued to abandon artworks when I moved from my lovely art studio in Ohio to Central Florida. In the past 4 years I had sort of let my abandonment of artworks languish for the most part.

It more formally became a movement when Michael deMeng began a FaceBook group (of which I am one of over 36,000 members of artists).  Artists post pictures of the art they have made for abandonment as well as pictures of where they abandoned it.  I even have found several pieces of abandoned art myself over the years from other artists who are anonymous.

This past summer when I was teaching art camp, one of the projects my campers did during the week was to make artist trading cards and leave them to be found by others.  The lovely thing about this was that we had permission from the Orlando Museum of Art to leave the tiny artworks around the hallways and other spaces at the museum.  Some of the students were so excited to see someone pick up their abandoned pieces of artwork.  Others were loathe to leave their artwork behind.

For me, abandoning art is a very freeing process.  It enables me to do many things 1)practice non-attachment 2)see someone enjoy receiving a piece of free artwork and 3) destash some smaller pieces of art and jewelry that are ready for a new home.  I get no monetary reward from leaving these artworks and my art is not signed so no one other than myself and anyone with me when I abandon the art would even know it was mine except for any photographs I might take of the item.

Other than the summer camp abandonment, I haven't done any art abandonment for about 4 years, but I have been missing that joyful sense of release and the fun of surprise knowing that someone is going to find and either keep or share my artwork. I love the idea of an anonymous happy surprise. There is so much "not happy" surprise going on in the world today that I think we need this little random acts of kindness to jolt us back to knowing that we are here for more than just the hum-drum, ho-hum slog through life.

In fact, I think right now I'm going to go make a couple of pieces of art and prepare them to abandon. I'll slip them into my purse and when I find a place that feels like the right place, I'll find a hidey hole to leave them for someone.

May we all share our talents, find happy surprises, and release our attachments.

(c) 2017 SZing, Bohemian Art Cafe. All Rights Reserved.  Photographs courtesy Bohemian Art Cafe, All Rights Reserved.

14 Reasons to Abandon Art

I am very psyched up by a phenomenon I came across this past week--an art movement called Abandoned Art.  It's been going on for a while and has been somewhat of a "guerrilla art" movement.  I participated some while living in Ohio and am again excited to do some more abandonment of art.  I have many pieces of incomplete artworks, many that are quite small (easy to carry around and leave behind.)  I think the biggest challenge is that people seem to be quite unobservant and/or very oblivious.  I left some artwork this weekend and people literally walked right by it and did not even see it.  Other artists have talked about the same phenomenon.  Some artwork in a tree (a current challenge for the month of July) was actually "ducked under" by someone texting on a phone and the person never even saw the art.  A case of it actually hitting her on the head...of course, there are theories by some artists that the artwork is intended for a specific someone to find and only that person can find it even though it is directly in the path of others. 

(c) SZing "Eye spy"  (oops, fuzzy picture of it tho)

What is the purpose you may ask of abandoning artwork?
1.  Share art
2.  Share beauty
3.  Create conversation about art
4.  Increase awareness of art in the general population/public
5.  A happy surprise for someone
6.  A great feeling for the artist to know someone has adopted artworks
7.  A thrill at abandoning the art in public locations
8.  A thrill to see the artwork has disappeared from public locations
9.  A mystery as to who made the art
10. A mystery as to who found the art
11.  Inspire others
12.  Inspire artists
13.  Free artwork
14.  It feels good to give things away and surprise people

Most abandoned art is done anonymously or under a pseudonym.  Here is a website dedicated to abandoned artworks.  What fun.  Now I am going to carry a handful of small artworks I can abandon at any time.  If you are an artist, have you abandoned any artwork lately?  If you aren't an artist, are you on the lookout for it?