The Lardner Report

Unleash your creative superpowers!

Found Art = Value Added

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(Pic #1) A fiberglass panel from an unknown shipwrecked boat. Found in Santa Barbara, Cal.
12″ x 50″ Artist: Crashing waves and mother nature. This piece hangs in our entryway.

The most valuable art — just might be free.

Over the years, I’ve collected a few original pieces from fellow artists — some trades, some purchases — and sometimes small works from “guys on the street.” You may not know their names, but they are meaningful to me. I treasure all of them.

But just as significant — maybe even more so — are the pieces I find, sometimes on the street, or in this case, on the beach. About ten years ago, on a weekend trip to Santa Barbara, while out for a jog, I (literally) stumbled upon a couple of chunks of someone’s ravaged boat sticking up from the sand. They were worn and a little dangerous, as the ocean had roughed up their fiberglass edges.

(Pic #2) Original Cy Twombly drawing, 1967.

But they were beautiful. So I had to ask Josh to help me salvage them to give them the TLC they deserved, along with a rightful place in our home. I might have underestimated their weight, their bulkiness, and their spiky edges. It was a tough haul up to the car. But bless his soul, he made it. The one you see above reminds me of the work by one of my favorite abstract artists, Cy Twombly. (See close-up in Pic #2). Twombly created a compelling black and white “blackboard series” (one of which recently sold for $70-million) in the middle of his career.

It’s always interesting to me how art truly can be found everywhere, we just have to embrace those unexpected stumbles.

Creativity: Make Your Energy Your Art

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When I first saw the video above, I thought it was going to be an affirmation of one of the methods I use to break through creative malaise. A random assignment, with a 10 minute deadline. Turns out it affirmed something even more fundamental. 

My husband likes to say I have a secret weapon in every workshop I teach, whether for C-suite executives, or inner city kids. It’s what he calls “relentless exuberance.”  Watch this video for a minute. You will see a  photographer in a strange enviornment, one he has to bend to his creative will in an incredibly short period of time.

But he does it brilliantly. How? Relentless exuberance.  It’s as infectious as any disease they have ever studied at the CDC. Everyone around him catches it. Suddenly for all those students, his mission is their mission. They are his co-creators. Firefighters say that a particularly fearsome blaze creates its own weather system, increasing its destructive power exponentially. Watching this video I realized it’s true of positive energy as well — and the creative output resulting from that firestorm of excitement is a truly beautiful thing.

Proof Positive: Dogs Dig…. Music

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When art touches soul 

In my corporate workshops I always stress the importance of art — in any form — as a way to enrich our daily lives. Allowing art to find us, touch us, and inspire us — can lead to a visceral sense of complete joy and fulfillment. That apparently applies to quadrupeds as well.

Studies show that animals do respond to music — and in some cases, researchers notice a healing effect. When a team of researchers in Belfast, Northern Island, exposed 50 dogs in an animal shelter to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Greigs Morning and other classical pieces, the dogs “became calm and laid down.” When the researchers played music by Metallica and other heavy metal bands, the dogs “became agitated and began barking.”

In the attached video, you’ll see a what anthropomorhically appears to be a quite charming adult golden retriever — completely enraptured by a song played on guitar by a UConn college student named Drew Acoleo. Watch closely, and you can see “Bailey” actually bopping to the beat and “smiling” when antibiotics Drew begins to strum. As soon as he stops, Bailey does too.

The musician received so many queries about the video’s authenticity that he felt he needed to explain: He says he was playing in the basement of a friend’s house when he noticed his buddy’s golden responding to his tune. He was as surprised as we are, and he decided to record the session on his iPhone.

Drew says he wants to make it clear–that he doesn’t work for Anheuser-Busch. (You’ll notice the can of Bud Light propped in a very strategic place on the right side of the screen.) Guitar World Magazine concluded that it’s just a clever way for us to watch Drew’s hand strumming in the can’s reflection.

The viral video has now reached nearly 6 million views in just one month’s time. Now some Bailey fans are hoping to see this clip run as a commercial during the Super Bowl next week. Hey, goofier things have happened. Here’s one of the finalists from the “Crash the Super Bowl” homemade ad contest for Doritos: