MAXIMALISM AND ME

You've heard of the minimalists, meet a maximalist. Spell check likes minimalist, but not maximalist, though there is such a word. The first definition of maximalist that comes up on Google is “(especially in politics) a person who holds extreme views and is not prepared to compromise.”  Well, that’s not me at all, at all. (Well, maybe sometimes!) But Google goes on to quote Wikipedia and say “In the arts, maximalism, a reaction against minimalism, is an esthetic of excess and redundancy. The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more", contrasting with the minimalist motto "less is more."

Less is more at this house. I’ve been downsizing for years, and I’ve got several cupboard and closet shelves that are empty. Empty can be a great concept. There is one area where more is more: on my walls. On a lark, I took a count of all the items hung on the walls of this house, Current, never final, count: 210 - 52 in the kitchen alone. Frank and I never set out to collect any one thing, we don’t have a lot of dust collectors in this house, but it seems we’ve amassed quite a number of things to decorate our walls. They range from handed-down prints and etchings, to W.W.II postcards, to prints, photos, and souvenirs we’ve collected for ourselves. There are several quilts, and lots of needlework done for us by one very special person.

The website Houzz talks about gallery walls – I have several of them. One nice thing about wall-hung things is that you rarely have to dust them. The other is that just a glance at them, in the same way you’d glance at the title on the spine of a favorite book, can evoke a small wave of memories and delight.