Level Change Modern Hanging Art Mobile | Mark Leary Designs
Mobile: Level Change
On time
“I can’t stop it?” asked bird.
“No,” explained fox, “but you can stop wasting it.”
“I can’t stop it?” asked bird.
“No,” explained fox, “but you can stop wasting it.”
Thoughts while making
“That’s a car?” she asked. And her question said it all. Almost.
I was a junior in high school, and I was taking an art class. For our final project, we had to paint a mural.
I can’t remember why I decided on a Lamborghini, but there it was. It was supposed to look like it was blasting out of the wall, bricks flying everywhere. But the proportions were all wrong. And the colors. And the perspective. Um and all the details. It *was* red, so I guess it had that going for it.
The mural lived in this dark, unused hallway (which was probably a blessing) near the campus wood shop. Every day, third period, I’d head out there to paint. And nearly every day, I’d keep painting well into my lunch hour.
Objectively, that mural sucked. And I knew it in real time. But from the second I put on that painter’s smock until the moment I took it off, time sort of happily melted away; proving, I guess, that flow state really is about process and not product.
When I’m making mobiles, I have this same experience. Time changes. It softens. It sweetens. It swirls around me like my fuzzy blanket. Would-be problems turn into challenges, transforming into opportunities for discovery. I feel at once clearer *and* dreamier, at home in my body and in my thoughts.
I’ve been thinking a lot about time recently, about how I’m prioritizing it, about how quickly it seems to pass. I’ve been asking myself: Am I “making the most” of my time? How can I be more intentional with it, present to it, aware of it? My self-talk is not always nice on this front. I’m learning.
As I was taking these photos of Level Change, it struck me how much it looked like a clock. But instead of marking hours and minutes, I imagined the multiple hands charting overlapping moments and memories, experiences and events, the substance of our everyday; a life clock with lines connecting past, present, and future, you and me, from birth and death.
Where have you experienced flow in your own life? Are you able to find that place as often as you’d like? How can I help?
