by Aimee Cartier

Created on: January 21, 2007   Last Updated: February 18, 2008

There is a bumper sticker around the parts that I live that says, "Art Saves Lives". When I first saw this sticker I thought, "Well that's a gross exaggeration!" However, over the years I have come to a different perspective.

We are probably all familiar with those ruts in our lives when everything- and I mean everything seems sort of mundane and uninteresting. We feel as though we are moving through the same repetitive motions day in and day out- like a factory worker on a conveyor belt: get up, get kids dressed, off to work, come home, make dinner, go to bed repeat, repeat, repeat. Life feels, well lifeless.

It is particularly in these moments that I have come to appreciate this local bumper sticker and remember one of the keys to reviving my life: ART. How many times have I been ejected out of my world of seeming mediocrity by a thought provoking image or by words on a page that hold up details in such beautiful clarity that I start to appreciate the precious details in my own life? Countless.

There is a woman in my town that makes art out of grocery bags. She paints, and draws, and writes on this absolutely ordinary item. She draws objects from her daily life. You might see a beet, or a carrot, or a bowl of spaghetti with a clever saying written below it. You see objects that you are likely to see in your own house. She says that using this medium and drawing these objects reminds her of the beauty of everyday life. And truth be told, looking at her paintings I too realize how astoundingly beautiful the rings and color of a purple onion are, or how even the plain paper bag that I get at the grocery store can hold something beautiful.

It reminds me that art is all around meand that there is beauty in the most "ordinary" of things. I start to notice the flavor of my life the "same old people" that are always at the caf I frequent, the delicious taste of almonds in my morning oatmeal, or the smile of the librarian when I walk in the door. In essence art that touches me brings me to recognize and appreciate the particular aromas of my own life, and frankly that does save my life. It wakes me up out of the mundane and into the extraordinary ordinary.

Certainly not every piece of art I see, or read, or hear does that for me. But for the ones that do I can't say enough!

How grateful I am to wake up into a life that I forgot I loved and see it through the eyes of another's expression! Waste of time? Not on your life!

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