It’s that time of year again when creators all over the globe join in the creative challenge called #The100DayProject. While there are no firm rules or structures, the idea is that a person commits to spending a few minutes a day doing something creative for one hundred days in a row. There is also the encouragement to post the work online throughout the process.
I’ve engaged this challenge for the last few years and found some amazing gems hidden in my inner landscape as I sculpt, draw, paint, and collage my way through the days. Each of the years that I’ve completed this 100-day project, I have adhered to the suggestions to do the full hundred-day endeavor and to post my work on social media.
This year I’m allowing myself some freedoms, having seen for myself repeatedly now that I am capable of engaging the entire project over the full three-month-plus time frame. In short, I’ll be doing things differently this year:
I am starting the project when it best works for me (which means several weeks before the official global start time). In fact, I started this week - on Monday the 29th of January.
I am only committing to the first thirty days of the project. After that, I’ll see how it goes day by day.
I am doing two projects at once: (1) the visual art pieces and (2) edits on my current book project, Fiddleheads, Feathers, Firs (due out this year). So, I will be making quick little landscape paintings with oil pastel, some of which have upcycled items (from my recycling and trash cans) incorporated into the work. I will select from the images I’ve painted to create a series of handmade books. (The construction of those books will occur later in the year.) Most of the landscape paintings are inspired by photos I’ve taken of actual landscapes. As I wrote in my book, Writing on the Landscape, I have completed a number of major writing milestones (particularly graduate school documents like my thesis and my dissertation) while pairing that extensive writing process with some sort of visual arts expression. For example, I took a weaving course during the final stretches of my thesis writing, and I made woven-paper collages during my dissertation years. Each time I’ve paired my writing with visual arts, I seem to have a much richer experience of both.
I might share some (but perhaps not all) of the landscape paintings here on this blog. I haven’t decided whether I’ll be posting them on social media. What I edit in my manuscript will not appear anywhere until the published version of the book is out.
My biggest priority this year is to go deep and broad. I want to make progress on my current book project while also keeping my “hand in” the work of making art. I am doing a deep dive into my life material to see what emerges as color and shape on paper, and as words in a book.
So far, so good…Every day this week I have painted a little landscape and conversed with the content of my book.
What types of creativity would you like to try?
