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'Messy Thrilling Life' review

Writer Sabrina Ward Harrison makes art out of life

By Emilie Zanger
Published: November 19th, 2004 | 1:53pm

You don’t read Sabrina Ward Harrison’s third book, Messy Thrilling Life: The Art of Figuring Out How to Live (Villard Books), as much as you absorb it, consume it like food for the soul. Try as you might, you can’t make a label stick to this book; it is as much visual art as it is a diary or a self-help volume on how to fall in love with your life. Messy Thrilling Life consists of, as Harrison puts it, “bits and beginnings, little forts I set up in my studio and in my dreams.”

On the most literal level, Messy Thrilling Life follows the artist Harrison’s move from Northern California, her home base and the location of her beloved studio, for New York City, the place she always felt every serious artist must eventually call home. It’s a chronicle of the emotional wringer she goes through when she arrives in the city’s vast concrete terrain, and, soon afterward, feels the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks unfolding just blocks from her new nest.

That said, I dare you to take this book at the literal level. You can’t. Every page contains a multitude of enticing detours to lure you away. You get lost in its rich collage imagery and intimate, confession-style prose-poetry. Each page is visually unique, ranging from straight text — type-written or in Harrison’s own scrawly, loopy hand — to collages made of photographs, paint, sketches, and fabric swatches, with poetry or stream-of-consciousness word flow (“Girls seem very leggy in this city, their legs go on and on. Where did they all come from? What’s going on?”) tucked in around the margins or partially hidden behind some odd scrap of paper or an old dress pattern.

Sometimes an entire page contains a single image: in a two-page spread, a photo of clouds faces a page containing a photo of a used paper coffee cup taped down to a stained brown cardboard background. Simple images like these evoke complex, contradictory desires (to take flight or ground yourself?), and show up again and again, urging us to accept them for their beauty and authenticity.

Sometimes the prose itself isn’t easy to find in the beautiful mess. But that’s okay. It’s the odds and ends poking out of every corner that especially inspire. Reading Messy Thrilling Life is a bit like going on a treasure hunt, and each time you pick it up to set out anew, there’s a new trinket waiting to be uncovered in the art-text. For lovers of life’s perfect little moments of simple happiness, Harrison’s book makes a great companion. Nights of dancing on rooftops, creaky old beds, and sparkly high heels become the stuff of a full life.

Messy Thrilling Life seamlessly merges perennial themes of self-seeking, body image, relationship navigation, and growing up with visually challenging artwork, rendering those old, comfy, Judy Blume-esque ideas new and interesting and very, very personal. And though Harrison’s journey takes her back to her Northern California home, we can all stand to learn the lesson she learns from her adventures in the Big Apple: “You are the right place.”