moss wall art

Installing your new moss wall art: the how and why!

Moss wall art is unique and inspiring, so show it off! We’ve received some questions from our wonderful customers about how to install our pieces, so we’d love to explain!
 
HOW
 
Our moss wall art’s frame has extended edges that are to be used as a “hook.” In addition, our moss wall art is lightweight, so it does not require a lot of support. The indentation is deep enough so that a screw or nail will be able to hold the moss wall art safely.
 
First, find a good spot where you’d like to hang your moss wall art. Depending on the size, install one or two screws into the drywall. If you are hanging the moss wall art by its shorter side (the 18” or smaller side), you only need one screw! But if you have a larger piece, such as our 18×36” piece, and would like to hang it horizontally, we recommend at least two screws for each end.
 
Second, place the edge of the frame onto the screw. The part of the screw emerging from the wall should be under the lip of the frame (where the frame becomes indented). That’s it! It’s all ready to go!

WHY

Why have we decided not to include any wires or hooks on our moss wall art? Because we want you to show off your moss wall art any way you please. Some prefer the artwork horizontally, while some prefer it to hang vertically. Some like the driftwood to be on this side, or that side. It’s completely up to you! You can flip it around to get it exactly how you like. The frame is made to support the artwork at any orientation so that you get exactly what you want.
 
We hope this helps. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at any time. Don’t forget to follow our social media pages for more news and pictures!

Hallway moss art | green wall

Here is a recent moss wall art piece we made. It is a nice addition to the hallway in the entry. Having a green wall art piece with no care is a great way to enjoy nature without watering.

moss art, fern art, sticks

Moss art in an entry hallway.

 

moss wall art

Origin story

David Whyte, the poet and founder of Invitus Conversational Leadership, encouraged us to ask beautiful questions – intimate invitations to shaping our identity, to making ourselves and our work visible to the world.  I spent a year asking a variety of questions, one of which was:

“How can I inhabit more fully the elements into which I was born?”

I grew up with a dad who loved being outdoors; he was always hiking through local trails and creek beds, looking for mushrooms after a rain or for weeds that were edible, gathering interesting stumps to decorate the yard from the beaches of the California coast.  I realize that I too do this, and continue to do this.  I never have considered myself an athletic-outdoorsy person; I never learned to ski, or surf or rock climb… I did learn to walk, quietly and pay close attention, to pick only a few mushrooms so that there would be plenty of spores left for next year. I learned to see the differences in trees and pick wild edible plants.  Of course as a teenager, I quickly tired of my dad’s ‘teachings”, but never did I tire of the being in nature. My high school years were filled with days of sitting on rocks in the Cold Springs Creek, or laying beside the river in the Santa Ynez mountains with friends, just being together.  When I first met Sean, our first dates were car camping in the Sepse wilderness above Ojai. He said one of the things he loved about me was that I was content just sitting on a rock.

All of this is the ground upon which I sit and the place where I’m starting WabiMoss with Sean.  I made a preserved moss painting for our friends cafe, and in doing so have felt a sense of coming home, a sense of inhabiting the elements into which I was born. Placing moss, found sticks, a nest, or lichen gathered on walks into beautiful frames Sean made for me felt like a homecoming.

Within a few days, he made a website, we hired a professional photographer and we ordered up some preserved moss, gathered lichen and twigs from the coast and from our mountain cabin retreat and WabiMoss was born.  We visit Japan frequently, and have a special love affair with the Japanese aesthetic.  The name is a bit of a play on words, as “wabi” is the essence of beauty in simplicity and the ending “masu” [pronounced like moss] in Japanese is the ending of many verbs; it’s the stem when creating present-tense, polite forms of verbs.  So WabiMoss is a play on this Japanese stem, as if to translate into “to be ‘wabi.'”  This is my very loose interpretation of the very complex Japanese language.  I am sure my very correct Japanese friends would shake there head at me and smile, but hey! It’s my word!

What is your beautiful question?  My wish is that it will lead you to your ground, your personal frontier, and that you have the courage to take the first small step. Here’s to the adventure!

Geri and her moss

Every time Geri and I go to the beach, she ends up carrying sticks, rocks and seaweed by the handfuls home. After sitting in our car for a few weeks, these artifacts are brought into the house and placed on her art desk. Now that we’ve begun making moss wall art, there is a use for all of these wonderful items, and now I find myself bringing driftwood to her at home! It’s wonderful that she has found an expression of something that has been so deep in her for years. Welcome to WabiMoss, where my wild nature wife can create and share beauty.