208 weeks

I started reading “Let’s move the needle: an activism handbook for artists, crafters, creatives, and makers” by Shannon Downey and “Your art will save your life” by Beth Pickens over Christmas break and I’m struck by this present moment’s opportunity. I spent the last Trump presidency being angry. And I’ve decided that I won’t spend the next four years angry. I want to spend my time making things and being in touch with my creativity and my creative community.

I’m thinking of developing a meditation art project over the next four years. A creative counter-narrative to the greed and hatefulness, the lies and the meanness. While I have absolutely zero plans to spend time paying attention to Trump, there are multiple sources I plan to continue reading so I’ll have an idea of what’s going on. I may pull from some of these sources to help guide my work. My word for 2025 is ‘gentle’ and that fits right into both the counter-narrative aspect and the meditative practice of this project.

This project will be in addition to donating to charity, participating in mutual aid, emailing my elected officials every dang day, and working in my community. I’ll be looking for ways to cross pollinate my project in these areas. I don’t have any specific plans and I want to stay open to what might present itself. I say this to hold myself accountable to doing something that is both inward and outward focused and not hiding in my studio for the four years. 

My friend Ray reminded me of this article. She has this quote tattooed on her arm:

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. 

I know I read this article after it came out back then but rereading it now brought tears to my eyes. I don’t know of any better response to this moment in time. Thanks Ray, for the reminder.

Friends along the way

I’m thrilled to be joined in this work by Nullsie! She and I were talking this past week about ways we could center ourselves during this time. I was explaining some background on this project and she wanted to work on a version too. So we will be doing some coworking on this. She’s got her own specific plan and I have mine. We are meeting this week to talk about logistics and refining our projects. I’m hopeful we will can continue to zoom cowork during the time as well.

If this is sparking something for you, I hope you will consider working on your own project! Most of my ideas around this came from those two books I mentioned above. I recommend reading them if you are an artist (the Beth Pickens one) and then an artist at all inclined to activism (the Shannon Downey one).

1,460 days

I did the math on how many days four years is and I have to say it made me a little sick. I don’t know how I feel about a project of that length (I’m working very hard to not imagine what can go wrong in our country during that time). But 208 weeks seems slightly more manageable. I think maybe a project/piece once a week for 208 weeks is doable. So that’s how I’m going to count my pieces. This is week 1.

My project

My plan is to work small so all the pieces can be combined into something bigger after I’m done. So I’ll be working on either 3×3″ or 4×4″ squares. I’ll be focusing on writing down things from the week that are hopeful or uplifting in some why. People resisting with grace and fortitude in these fascist leaning times. I have some vague ideas of what the pieces will look like but I think I’m going to have to work for a few weeks to see how it plays out. Or I may end up illustrating/collaging these in some way. I dunno. We will see what we see.

What about you? Are you about to embark on a new project (big or small)? I’d love to hear about it! Email me or start a conversation by leaving a comment on this post! If you’d like to keep up with what I’m working on, I’d love to have you as a newsletter subscriber. I include blog posts from here, cool things I find online, and pictures of my dogs. Sign up here.