It’s inevitable that projects and challenges creep into your consciousness; at times they seem to be everywhere on social media. Usually they’ve already begun, or it seems like another layer to add to an onion skin day that may already be bringing tears to your eyes. Hence I vaguely knew about The 100 Day Project; it even has its own website.
The idea? Choose a creative project, do it every day for one hundred days, and share your process on your social accounts using the hashtag #The100DayProject. This year a post popped up on the day it started. I was already doings little ‘somethings’ each day, mixing my usual photography with experiments in other media, including gel plate printing.
So it seemed an ‘easy’ fit, and I thought ‘why not?’
I began with the criteria that I would find something on my daily walk - a reflection of the season perhaps - bring it back and respond to it, making another small print. The first few days saw monotype prints including feathers and grass and twigs. By day four photography was in the mix; I took a blank sheet outdoors to see what marks nature might give me in her own domain.
Then I mixed up the ways, printing over photos, and using up leftover ink on reject prints.
I learned a valuable lesson doing this: begin with something ‘un-precious’ that you have no fear of messing up.
Quietly, without any fuss, connections started to form. I began to react to things around me or ‘left-over’. I found ways to bring in marks or methods I’ve tried before. Some of the dots joined, and some of them prompted more dots.
One third of the way in I see the project’s value in building momentum, forming habits, showing up (in the studio and on social media) and sparking new ideas.
I can already see myself doing a similar project again in future, and that this might not just be ‘visuals’, but incorporate writing too.
You’ll find my ‘100 Days of Nature’ here, and, of course, on my social media. The links are in the footer if you fancy joining me there. As a long player there will be plenty more tracks of water art, mark making and monotypes from 100 Days to enjoy!
At approximately monthly intervals, I send out 'FLOW' to subscribers which is evolving into a medley of image and word, reflecting my practice and thinking as an artist.