At the beginning of 2022 I made a re-commitment to my creative arts practice. I constantly talk about creativity and living a creative life, and it dawned on me that I was missing a fundamental part to that, which was to create art on a more regular basis. My response was to dedicate some time each day to creating artwork in my favourite medium – mixed media and collage. Regardless of how much time I had available, I committed to creating an artwork every day based on curiosity, observations, reflections and no judgement. My artworks would be what they would be. The result was 365 daily postcard size artworks. Little did I know when I started the project that I would end up having an exhibition in 2023.
Which is what happened for five weeks during May and June this year, when my 365 daily artworks were on display at Scrumptious Reads Gallery. It was an amazing few weeks, as I gave time to be with the work and the people who came to see it. The response was humbling, the conversations were far ranging, deeply human and meaningful. The work seemed to hit a nerve with people in the best possible way. I’m still absorbing those very personal interactions and conversations.
People ask me what next and have offered many suggestions including ‘you should do a book’ to ‘vlogging’ about the experience and what I learned along the way. There is much to explore here, and I envisage different projects emerging from this. One that has quickly come to life, and I’m excited is a collaboration with the team at CCS and the development of a digital card deck to be used in facilitation workshops and coaching sessions. In the meantime, this along with other projects will evolve over the coming weeks and months with more information to follow.
While I hadn’t started out with an exhibition in mind, I’m so glad I did for many reasons. Added to that was the opportunity to have an artist’s talk and share the artworks with others and their associated stories who then invested in purchasing original pieces and prints. If you would like to know more about my A Year in Collage mm365 project, I’d love to hear from you.