The past four months have been quite a ride for me. I wrapped up my ELEVATE mentorship program, spent the month of January in Minnesota caring for my mom at the end of her life, pulled together my pop-up show CELLULAR STORIES, and have just finished a week of group and private lessons. Whew. It’s about time for a break, don’t you think?
Yeah, well…that’s not gonna happen, because I’m really excited about this next project I’ll be diving into: Navigating Curiosity: Experiments in Tools, Textures, and Typography
One of the big take-aways from my mentorship program was how much momentum played a critical role in my confidence as an artist, in improving my technical skills (practice makes perfect, right?!), and in letting go of fear and preciousness and embracing risk taking and detours along the way. So with my mentorship program behind me but still in my blood, I decided to focus my momentum on going deeper in my exploration of techniques I used in my CELLULAR STORIES series that, for lack of a better description, really turned me on. (This is the “Navigating Curiosity” part.)
So, over the next three+ months, I will be participating in the The 100-Day Project, a global art project that anyone can participate in (even you!). The premise is simple—choose an action you’d like to do for 100 days and share your experience. It could be something creative like photographing flowers, drawing stick people, or making a collage. Or something inspiring like writing letters, reading to a child, or going on a nature walk and learning a new bird call. It’s totally up to you. There are no hard and fast rules. In fact, make up your own set of rules if you want to and do your thing for the next 100 days.
One of the techniques I really enjoyed in some of my CELLULAR STORIES work was making rubbings/impressions and paint slides. I want to take that concept further by experimenting more with different tools and materials to make the rubbings with and on. (This is the “Experiments in Tools” part.) As part of that exercise, I will be focusing on how to best coax textures out and get them to tell a story. On the surface, a rubbing is easy to make. But how can I make it more interesting? How can I make it better express something? (This is the “Experiments in Textures” part.) And finally, toward the end of my mentorship program, I started to create my own personal alphabet and while I have a great start (an actual alphabet!), I want to refine it more. It’s not quite where I want it to be. (This is the “Experiments in Typography” part.)
My plan is that over the next 100 days, I will be posting my progress/sketchbook/artwork/experiences/experiments daily on Instagram (@barbskoog and #100DaysOfNavigatingCuriosity) and Facebook and weekly summaries here on the blog. I would love to have you join me on yet another adventure.
So are you ready?
Here I go…the fun begins tomorrow, April 4.