If you were expecting an ad, then you will be sorely disappointed… or perhaps filled with glee.
I have been thinking about what to say this week and I haven’t landed on a great idea. I do need to say something though, because that is the pattern I am developing with this project.
The pictures and the posts are pretty disconnected. I considered adding backstories to the animals that could highlight things about Pop. In the end I decided against that, but decided that I should talk about this project as a whole. Everyone who creates something has their own unique process. Some gain inspiration through nature or meditation; others force themselves to work and get inspiration through perspiration. I’m not sure what my process really entails except to say it usually ends up with a lot of stewing and fretting followed by some frantic work to hit my own self-imposed deadlines. If I was a professional artist, I suppose that I would have to have some more consistent motivation to produce, but I don’t have that. I enjoy photography, I love trying creative new ideas and I relish making, and let’s be honest, sometimes breaking things. Oftentimes the work happens in fits and starts, sometimes going through long periods of inactivity followed by frenetically paced creative spurts.
For me, projects take a different tack. When I start a project I give myself a framework that I operate within. Sometimes the rules I set and parameters are well thought out and sometimes they are just guidelines. I will (probably) never undertake a project that includes 300 pictures in a year. I think I learned my lesson on that one. But a 52 photo project seems manageable. I like to set projects that take up a year, although since Covid started, I haven’t had the will, for lack of a better word, to always stick the projects out. As an unknown, that hasn’t caused me much of a problem, and I think that sometimes just sticking out a project that isn’t working for you and isn’t bringing you any joy is the smart thing to do.
The Change of Mind project had its own hiccups. It was supposed to be a one year project in which I would do something with pill bottles followed by a weekly picture and then I would document it in a blog post. That turned out to be far from reality. The something became clear early on — animals. That was where things got hung up. It was bad. On the one hand I was producing the figures. On the other, I was broken. Pop’s death wasn’t unexpected. He was nearly 88 and anything after 85 was kind of bonus time. I wasn’t sad for Pop to pass, not like when my brother died, I knew I would miss him, and I do and did, but I believe he is happier now on the other side and, frankly, better off than he was. Grief is an odd thing though. I don’t think you can really predict how it is going to affect you. So 2022 just ended up being a bad year.
At the beginning, though, I felt like it was time to do another project. This one was for Pop. That is really a big part of why I just pushed things forward and decided to finish what I started last year. Some projects just need to be done. Not because anyone will see them, but because they do something for you. A Quarter for Cancer was therapeutic for me. It was incredibly stressful, but it kept me busy and at the time I needed that. Maybe this kept me from really shutting down and pushing people away last year. This falls into the category of something I needed to do, though few people may ever really see it.
This was an art project, from its inception. The point of it was to make something artistic with the pill bottles and funded by the spare change that was contained within them. The words weren’t originally part of it. I intended to add some thoughts about the pictures, which would have made them relevant, but emotions get tied up with things, and even though the animals weren’t directly tied to or related to Pop, except that the raw material came from him, they really are related to him. Because, while I spent hours working on new figurines, I thought about Pop. When I cut pieces of wood, it was Pop that taught me to use power tools. I cut my teeth painting from watching Pop make scenery. What little I know about sculpting or model building came from spending time with Pop. He is woven into the fabric of every picture in some indirect and perhaps inexplicable manner.
The result of this indirect connection is that the picture is a picture. It is an animal doing something that an anthropomorphic miniature animal just might do. That is what the picture is. What I write isn’t necessarily tied to the visual. The picture is my way of using things that Pop taught me to, hopefully, delight someone or maybe even many someones. But I hope that the words will also have value.