GOLDEN HARVEST - OR MY 40 DAY AUTUMN CHALLENGE
GOLDEN HARVEST - OR MY 40 DAY AUTUMN CHALLENGE
I have become increasingly disillusioned and alarmed by social media. I love seeing a kind of chronicle of my work, with colours, inspirations, studio snapshots and finished artwork curated into that neverending tiled layout. I love selecting images thoughtfully, matching moods and colours. But the perils of social media have become impossible to ignore, and we know it. Yet, we creatives (I) cling to these platforms, thinking that they are essential for reaching more people, for displaying our work. And it’s true, it’s difficult to come up with a benign alternative.
So, I am embarking on an #autumnchallenge for myself. Here is an experiment: For the next 40 days, or until this year’s autumn craftshow season starts on the 9th of November, I want to create and post something new every day. A thought, a photograph of my autumn meanderings, a snapshot of my jewellery bench, or a drawing. Some kind of real creative output. The overarching theme for me now is the changing season around me, harvesting, the golden slanted light, the stark contrast between the living and the dying.
I will not post these daily snippets on any social media platforms I don’t own, but rather on this blog.
The purpose of this 40-day immersion is two-fold.
I want to see if I can create a curated chronicle of ideas that will give me the same sense of satisfaction elsewhere than on my Insta feed. But in an online space without the distractions, without the echochambers, and without the precarious feeling that my creative work is no longer under my own control.
More importantly, I want to generate momentum for another productive period of making, I want to dive into the studio, to draw, to enamel, to saw and bend and solder and compose, to put together what I have gathered over the past few months and watch whatever emerges. I want to share this process with those who want to see, but without making myself dependent on likes and responses. And I want to hold myself accountable, to move against the tide of short attention spans and superficial ideas and lack of concentration and decline in deep though that is spreading across the globe like an epidemic.
If you wish to accompany me on my explorations, you are exactly right here on my blog. I’ll see how I feel and reflect on this period of making - hopefully a rich October harvest - afterwards.
Photograph by Knipserchris.