I'm going crazy for art right now, and ways that I can incorporate it into my every-day life, a space filled with excuses and not enough time. This morning, I'm considering one of those self-portrait projects wherein an artist/person takes a picture of herself each day (for a year or till she forgets). I'm not entirely sure what philosophical reason drives people to do this (googling it only gets you a list of blogs and sites* where people are doing it, not why they're clicking away), but I can come up with a few of my own:Reason the first: Like journaling, it's a daily reason to do something, anything, that gets your hands, fingers, and mind going. It's hard to take just one picture, draw just one little sketch.
Reason the second: I suspect that if I make it through to September of 2009 with this project, it will be an interesting record of what the space in between was.
Reason the third: It's a project, self-assigned, an exercise in discipline and follow-through. That alone is reason enough to do it.
So, having come up with three semi-legitimate reasons beyond self-importance and narcissism, I now need parameters:
Parameter the first: More than likely, this will be a photo project, however, I am not going to limit my medium. I may opt to sketch, watercolor, finger paint, sculpt, interpretive dance, or poetize the daily self-portrait.
Parameter the second: I don't have one, but they always said if you had one, you had to have two; if you had a, you had to have b.
With reasons and parameters thus established, I embark on said project. And just to prove that (unlike the photo above) I don't always look angry (that's just my expressionless face), here's a picture of me and Nutmeg. Because we're cute. *One project in particular that I'm drawn to because of the range and emotion in her self-portraits
