Yoga, Education and Sustainable Living for Children and Families

Artist Statement

Order from Chaos

by Sydney Solis

I grew up in a messy house. Creative Bohemians were my family, with real ancestors to prove it. An overflow of ideas blew through my mother’s mind, which was a rattle of paper, poetry, books, magazines, travel ephemera and letters. The house was exploding with them, and chaotic clutter lurked in every corner and hallway.

It could be confusing, living amid all the disorder; and it caused my mother and us a lot of anxiety. My mind became just as busy and creative. There was also a constant and deep desire to clean the mess up, but as soon as we did, it seemed it slipped back to chaos again quickly.

Other children teased my sisters, brother and I about our house in Boulder, Colorado; and it caused great shame. But it also piqued my curiosity, as the flood of ideas it contained caused me to roam the house and basement. I loved the knowledge that paper brought, so I dug through boxes, chests and drawers in fascination of their eclectic contents, roaming through paper and books, postage stamps and magazines, antiques and knicknacks, searching for some clue to the mystery behind life.

My oldest sister Nancy taught me to make collages as a kid, and I loved cutting out pictures from old magazines and pasting them together in themes around love and babies. My Dutch father taught me photography, and I was the editor of my eighth grade yearbook. I made collages of kids from the photos I took, which I developed and printed in the basement.  Artist Tina Erikson, a roomate I had when studying at Brooks Institute of Photography, taught me to tear paper, and I started doing photo collage. I worked in newspaper photography and journalism before I started making handmade paper and books and merging photos with them after my children were born.

When my mother died, I made a good dent in cleaning out the house for my father. I once again was curious and roamed the house, culling her collection of paper, books, magazines, ephemera and little objects. I collected them all, organized them all, and started merging them with the handmade paper and magazines. After my husband died, I started making collage to relax from my day job – storyteller, children’s yoga teacher and founder of Storytime Yoga for Children and Families.

I recognize that I honor my mother and childhood by resurrecting and organizing these old scattered objects into new creations of art.  And now, rather than shameful, I regard the mess and the chaos as that which makes it beautiful in the first place.

In my life now I am always making order from chaos. I am constantly finding the beauty in fault and error,  loving it because of its faults and errors, and then offering it up as love and art.

Sydney Solis

St.Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

{ 0 comments }