Heartside goes to London, part 1

It takes about a 20 minute walk from our Hyde Park hotel into Selfridges Department store. An odd location for a temporary exhibition site, Selfridges is hosting Exhibition #4 by the marvelous and overly enthusiastic Museum of Everything (which is more of an entity with a stellar permanent collection that travels its exhibits to unlikely- and yet remarkable- locations). The museum has taken over most of the large windows of Selfridges- which house the likes of spinning letters, stuffed superheroes, and giant door paintings- all to highlight the work of the 50 artists that are housed in the newest exhibit in the lower ground level of the massive department store.

Entering the lower level, you find arrows all over the floor to point you toward "Everything." You have to walk by cellphone counters and people spraying you with Beyonce perfume as you are trying to find the location of this exhibit in the store. It doesn't seem to make sense. Until you find it. The little handmade circusy entryway guides you into an amazing (and free!) dimly-lit curation of over 400 pieces from artists around the world. It's a little treasure, placed right there in the public eye so we have no choice but to trip over it and look inside. Works are grouped sometimes by artist, sometimes by subject matter, and there are holes all over the walls because they change the pieces around a few times a week. There are breathtaking, painstakingly detailed drawings, handmade airplanes, ceramic cameras, self-portraits, and declarations of love. We don't get to see Willie or Mark's works, but we hear they've been up, and they might be up again tomorrow, maybe the next day, who knows.

Willie grabs a seat at the table in the center of the exhibition, and proceeds to draw for about three hours. Every so often he'll pause and say thank you to the museum staff, telling them he feels "like a star blowin up." Gallery owners stop by to say hello, a history buff tells us all he knows about Michigan, and periodically Willie gets up to dance to Gerald LeVert. The staff are wearing embroidered lab coats and are all extremely welcoming and hospitable to us all. They promise to bring sharpies tomorrow for when we arrive, and we go back to drawing, filming and eating all the museum mints from the bowl.