THE BIG LOVE BALL: A LESSON IN REBOOTING YOUR PURPOSE
Wendy Watt / Photo by Maddison Heisler
Sometimes, if we’re open to it, one simple idea or an inkling to do something more meaningful can shift everything. Such was the case for interior designer and art director Wendy Williams Watt who founded the Big Love Ball three years ago and found a renewed sense of love and purpose.
Watt was already experiencing a successful career as one of Canada’s top 25 interior designers and owned an inspiring retail space (called Liberty) in downtown Vancouver but something was missing. She wanted to create something that impacted others in a playful way and spread a feeling of connection and inclusion. One day she had a pop of inspiration; creating art from a big silicone ball and adding the word LOVE across it. Soon the balls were seen in shops, restaurants, national monuments and weddings. First in Vancouver. Then, around the world.
Hajnalka Mandula / Photo by Anick Violette
“HOW COULD I SHARE MY PROFOUND FEELING IN AN UNCOMPLICATED WAY?”
– Wendy Williams Watt
“Big Love Ball was the manifestation of many feelings I had when shifting from the world of things and spaces to moments and people. Tired of expressing myself through s t u f f. I was forced to take stock when my computer mouse battery expired and the screen announced dryly.”
Aerin Knight / Photo by Anick Violette
Connection Lost
I set out to engage in the physical world seeking matterful connection with friends I’d not yet met. I felt compelled to express my love for humanity as swiftly and as vastly as I could. How could I share my profound feeling in an uncomplicated way? As I think in visual metaphor, Big Love Ball actualized before me.” she shares on on her website. “This big buoyant symbol of inclusion and connection now had a function. I was delivered from a state of stagnation and loneliness, with hours upon hours of exciting, silly, deepening, moving things to do before me. I remain a culture gawker with an insatiable appetite for art, nature, design, music, fashion, literature and film. I love mondo and micro moments. Enriched with my own sense of purpose I rest at the end of the day, full. Tomorrow excites me.
Connection Found
Photo by Bob Garlick
Watt now calls Big Love Ball her full time endeavor calling the ball “ conceptual art with a function. An inflatable sculpture with one word displayed across its breadth. Shared with one, or seven billion Big Love Ball delivers the single most important message to mankind”
To learn more about Watt and her creation visit: Big Love Ball