I sometimes think about art as an ornament, but really I’m realizing it’s a necessity. My house wouldn’t be a home without our art. It wouldn’t be uniquely ours without the knick knacks, the photo strips, the souvenirs from far away places brought back from these huge places for our tiny bookshelf.

Some days it’s a big dumb bow. Other days, it’s a frame that’s the art (but not what’s actually inside of it). These necessities are the little treats I gift myself everyday: hot coffee, a new 0.5 pen, the more expensive WOC-owned tampon cause now I’m scared of plastic toxins, a collection of stickers I won’t use but will save for who knows what, the overpriced lamp, the secondhand designer bag, another travel watercolor set, another book to add to the stack, the Sandy Liang $400 headband but only when it goes on sale on SSENSE. 

The small indulgence that somehow helps us get through the day, the hour, the minute. The days that make up the year. The small frequent care adds up to more than grand gestures. It’s the little spurts and recurrence of them that chain and link together. 

Ornament is a necessity because being a woman is this world is a marathon (a life marathon) not a sprint, not just when we’re feeling it, not just during an election cycle, but day in and day out. What are we doing if not adorning the most basic things in our lives with the wonder that they deserve, the delusion sometimes that’s required to achieve some unheard of goal? We are doing exactly what we are meant to do claiming these secret treasures we share with no one, with a small smirk, and the little treats that link us to the next moment, next season, next decade of our lives. Like deep breaths that link to the next, forever. 

We asked our friend Corrie if she had a big bow we could borrow for the show, and being the go to designer for MANY events, she DID! Should you need a tinsel backdrop, design for your office, an entire party with every colorful element considered, please reach out to her: @corrieincolor