Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Recently he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He is gathering 1000 participants (I think he is looking for more people -- if this sounds up your alley let me know). This means a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise. This means 100,000 gestures (they can be small!). As Erik said in his email call, "The math is arbitrary and held out as a motive. 100K is a vest pocket version of Revelation’s 'ten thousand times ten thousand angels'; it lines up with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa."

With about as much arbitrary yet focused planning, I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. In my teen-and-preteen years I greatly enjoyed drawing. I've played with it here and there since then, but this isn't an art discipline I've particularly cultivated in the last 20 years -- especially drawing images in front of me rather than from memory or imagination. So in that sense I'm letting myself try something new (or old but undeveloped) and not be good at it, like an arm-balancing posture in a yoga class. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. 

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text, as I did on the door (#17) below in the more hasty sketch in a recent writing workshop, trying to put all the steps together in under an hour (and letting myself live with the failures in that stretch). After that, I may go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation.

This week I completed my 25th drawing. See the photos below as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. Posting after completing every new 25 images seems like a good enough regular update. When I finalize them more with text and so forth I may share those as well, perhaps scanned, around the time I send them to Erik, but by then I will be deep in my fall-spring semesters at Boise State University and the Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program, so no promises.

In pursuing this project, part of me thinks, "What are you doing? Isn't this getting in the way of your writing time? You wanted to write a play this summer. Think about all the hours that are now going into this practice and not that script."

But at the same time, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. This isn't a new thought, but I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more so than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art in and of themselves. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple out back. The way lines curve. And that makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times.

So I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

And if you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), seriously do let me know.

These beings appeared to me last week in my Exploding Your Creativity workshop.
They introduced themselves in a scene I wrote using my non-dominant hand.
(We were practicing a Use Your Creative Limits exercise I love.)
Then space kid and canine made their inky way onto construction paper.

Now I'm a little obsessed with them.

What I want to know is, who do you think they are?
What's their story? Their background?
Where do they come from? Where are they?
What are they doing? What do they want?

I have a few ideas, but I want to hear yours.
Share in the comments if you like, or wherever I post on social media.

I think something larger may happen with them but I don't know what yet...

Whatever my recent Cabin workshops Refilling Your Creative Well and Exploding Your Creativity (in progress) have been doing for participants, they've been doing a lot to shake up my creative perspective, open up new mental windows and shine light on doorways to unlock in spirit, heart, body, soul. I haven't been doing as much of the homework that I assign as the artists who signed up, but I've enjoyed taking part in our quick bursts of different kinds of making within the two-hour weekly sessions.

Below are a few first-starts I made in our Week One and Two sessions of Exploding Your Creative Well and a couple of the collages from the Refilling Your Creative Well workshops (in February/March and August/September/October 2022) that serve as compasses for the direction I want my life to be pointing at this moment.

Looking at these assembled in a row, I can see some of my tendencies and habits that could invite me to break out of those boxes (which will be the focus of Exploding Your Well, Week 4). There are words I'd like to cut, phrases I could revise and images I'd develop if I wanted to refine them further, but that's not the point. They're not meant to be finished products -- or products at all. Throwing together colorful messes helps me get out of my head and notice what I'm noticing, which helps when I'm gathering material for big new projects as I am now.

Whether or not you identify as an artist, may you find time, energy and materials this late fall and winter to scramble up text, images and colors (and then some). May that help you look at your world in different ways and surprise yourself.

He eyes me from bicycle seat
looking backward riding forward
startled with our eyes meeting.
He didn't expect me to catch him.
His pupils flame up.
His skin evaporates.
This is him disappearing,
the phantom on mountain bike pedaling from YMCA
trying to stare and nab me to spirit world.
I don't avert my glance.
He stops mid-track then veers away.
Brown hair whitening, black skullcap pixelating,
he fades on resumed path to ageless night, forever wandering.
No one else saw him.
He didn't want anyone else to see him.
He didn't know he wanted me to see him.
Now I can't unsee the flickering exit to another world,
dance blinking overhead.
He spirals into non-being
but all around others like him trace the sky,
little blips on earth's surface,
little suckers at the bottom.
They fly and as I watch them soar I feel sleepy
nodding off on my way to next life.

I entered the sun like getting on a bus

But first:

A flight to highest atmosphere
above earth
circling clouds
I, satellite
drop back down

This the daily practice:
Rocket up, aim for sea

This the job:
Train for sun ship

My first try I miss water
Hit sand's edge

My trainer doubts I'm ready
I prove her wrong

In transit now

These days we enter the screen itself to chat
3D conversations across solar system
Immersed in web like suffocating flies
But how else to connect?

Nearing destination
Everything is now/then/next
I see forever at once
Our star flares, timelines unite

I wait on floor lying down
knees up
legs triangles
Remember future:

I ate our sun like a spoonful of potato leek
Light entered me

This was training
This was dream
This was real

Heat protruded
through fingertips, toes

Everyone said I looked brighter in spirit
I felt heavy, bound
Sweating gold flame

This is tomorrow
Next year
Never

The moon swallowed the sun
Swallowed me

This never happened
This is happening right now
This is happening to you

I entered the sun
Entered you
Entered a time when everything was love/kindness/truth

Entered a lie
Entered our future
Entered our dreams

earth's torso a hot beast in august
scorched and pregnant
her feet want rest
with ice packs underneath
but she's up over there in her garden
worrying over silver buffalo berry
and curlicue sage
her nursery hours never close
mother of a million young-old-ancient darlings
arctic whales who live beyond two hundred
thousand year old trees
flies who live an eye's blink
all on her watch
as nanny-mama-hospice worker
as we throw grass at her and stamp our feet
as we rip her apart
she's planting new green
her aching spine
weathered hands
scattering red hot pokers now
and snow-in-summer
her cloud dreams pour floods
that drink are drunk and wipe us clean
so she might find a nap
but it's always sowing-washing-harvest season

as time rolls into ink on my fingers
betraying my eyes' dark spots
from lost sleep spinning on to-dos
so you too dear mother: be still
among your hummingbirds and mint
burnout's not worth your sweat
someday all of us will fly
to the middle of sun
we'll raise tired arms
and dive toward flame
someday I'll just be a playwright
someday a pile in the ground
ashes blowing all around
someday I'll grow up past my face
and be a stronger version of me
someday I'll carry a stack of books in prairie jeans
and drop half of them
and my little brothers
will help me restack
they'll do a messy job
and I'll throw their bindings up in a roar
and they'll build a castle of words
in a world with giants and small folk
some are magic
and we all need a timeout

In February, for the first Refilling Your Creative Well workshop at The Cabin, we created medals for ourselves, wrote the ceremony speeches and presented ourselves with our awards, as inspired by Andrew Simonet. Below is my medal and speech.

This medal is for Heidi, for enduring the little things.

For sustaining at her everyday job when she wasn't always sure she wanted to be there on campus, rules changing moment to moment, frozen bike rides, students absent more often than present, in two worlds at once: Zoom and in person, coworkers going maskless, policing students on safety, getting Covid and working from home while sick, exhausted, depleted.

For learning a new class, a new system, a new platform and modality every semester since spring 2020.

For showing up. To the email inbox. Oh that dreadful box of doom. What will today bring? A mini-heart attack with every open. And the eye twitches! Good gawd. After six months of online classes, she didn't think either eye would stay still again.

This medal is for Heidi getting students to laugh, cry, spend time with each other, offering every flexibility possible. And whenever she could, she gave herself time. To write. To be. And one Sunday every few months to do nothing at all but be human. She learned not to work or take meetings on Sundays. Learned from her panic attacks, from days she felt as much aversion going into the classroom as she did on her worst years in high school. She stopped checking email after 6pm. Started checking once a day, even -- at least the personal email.

So this medal is for Heidi. For learning to love herself a little more. Learning that she needs travel, creative well being and a supportive community to sustain her. And declaring that she's gonna make smaller steps to get to those bigger goals, dammit, because
each day
each day
each day
a little something is possible
a tiptoe
ounce
atom
of forward movement can be made
toward giant impossible dreams.

So this medal is for Heidi. For going after joy.

The peaks jagged, barely visible behind mid-morning fog and clouds.
Ghost crests' pine green through grey drizzle.
We taste the air, misting droplets sizzling around.
Hard to know what direction they fall from, or jumping from below?
The conifers house ravens who shout to each other
across the street and amongst their branches.

We striding holding pack straps in our hands,
keeping as much weight off our backs as we can
on our trek to see Mendenhall's river of ice
before she disappears forever.

Feet sore, dressed in layers,
glasses, hats, fingerless gloves for me
in hooded sweatshirt and windbreaker,
a hat and sweatshirt for Thomas,
yellow rainjacket stuffed in his pack, sweat on his brow.
Or is it rain?

Side by side down the road.
We don't talk much to keep our breath,
except noticing aloud what we see.
My legs ache from so much walking.
I know Thomas is in pain beside me.

Highway pines and deciduous leaves reach up.
Bald eagle soars overhead, who Thomas points out
as the raptor shines in front of emerald giants.
Our skin chills and perspires in humid damp.
Mountains, mountains, everywhere, but also wet
throughout the greenhouse of Juneau's west side.

Our focus on the triangular summits ahead,
between which we glimpse a wedge
of white and blue -- a segment of glacier miles ahead.
My hood up over hat, glasses rain speckled.
We tread forward on the roadside.

Been in the midst of a big rabbit hole project this year I never anticipated with this cycle of centuries. What is a century? Most basically, a list.

This collection of lists is becoming a novella of a book, a shadow box, a podcast. Learn more about the process through the MFA at CIIS Artifact Podcast where this month they devoted an episode to my process completing this series and trying to represent that visually with a shadow box.

This weekend on Sunday (May 1) at MING Studios in Boise, I'll be reading from this series for the first time. If you're in Boise and want to hear, I will begin at 7pm through MING Studio's 7o'clock series. Sometimes they lock the doors right at 7, so get there on time :) It's $7 if you're not a member (and if you're an artist, you can be a member for $13 a year!). A lot of the stuff will be raw and vulnerable, freshly typed, so friendly faces please, for this work-in-progress reading. Thank you!

Maybe I'll see you there. If not, you can check out some of my process below and the podcast to learn more.

The rushing Payette, gentle roar by the shore.
We sat on wide boulder,
low sandstone flat at our feet
displaying our black Rubbermaid plates, containers, bins of food,
brought out one at a time.
Mountain pines stretched all around.
The day in high 60s
but a breeze asked me to pull up my sweatshirt hood.

Pale sky, trace clouds.
Greens, strawberries, crackers with chevre,
a yellow cheese that bit back
and tinned oysters.
Blackberry bubbling drinks rested on river rocks unopened.
We watched the ants watching us,
pools of sugar sand circling round stones,
the sap and water scents infusing life in our bones.
Kayakers waved paddles by.

On mountaintop, grass dried underfoot.
I reached the height of one landing
and knew the climb continued far above.
I craved a hike deep into wilderness,
to walk on and on to forever.
Our red Prius pulled into a temporary spot.

Tiny saplings emerged on the ridges,
bright needly tips shot up just in time to greet us.
On one side, thick brambles of conifers, aspens, huckleberry shoots, reeds.
A rocky soft hill descended steep down the other.
And up above this plateau with fresh open land for wandering,
ATV treads dug in from beyond
leading up to fire pits, fresh burnt logs, still smoldering.
Across the road, another peak raised giant.
Cars motored past in quick succession, short bursts of quiet between.

Anytime we leave the house
it doesn't seem like anyone else is isolating.
Traffic doesn't die.
Lycaenidae and Pieridae flutter by too,
black with orange wing tips, white with blue specks,
damselflies with translucent pixie wings.
I step up on a log, a stump, aged, cracked,
to see what's below the surface wood,
leveraging out the spaces under crevices,
wanting to hole up inside.