My January Personal Challenge Collage
To mark the closing of my own personal challenge, here’s a collage summarizing this month’s accomplishments.
Doing my own version of the 30 Painting in 30 Days Challenge gave me an opportunity to focus on compositions I had been thinking about painting, but hesitating doing.
In December, I had no idea how to approach January. I only knew it would be flexible with the goal of hunkering down to paint, without worrying about the quantity of paintings or blog posts.
In the end, I painted 27 of the 30 days, opting for larger, more detailed works. There were actually 11 paintings within paintings, taking about 2 days each. Here’s a photo to help you get a better sense of the relative scale of each composition.
I first discovered vending machines (see my first vending painting) with their iconically packaged products during the September Challenge, and decided to run with it here.
Why these particular products, you may ask? I think it’s partially because they are semi-autobiographical and there’s an emotional attachment. My husband Jay worked at Pepsi, the parent company of the Frito Lay, which manufactures of all the chips products from Doritos to Cheetos. As you may know, I worked on Twix from M&M Mars.
You can read more about the process in previous posts (America’s Favorite Chips, America’s Favorite Candies, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups)
The rest of January was spent chasing pantry moths, going to the dentist (had a string of bad luck), and taking in special New York City events like tidying guru Marie Kondo’s talk at Japan Society introducing her new Spark Joy book (feeling another blog coming on).
In the past week, I took time off to visit the Art and Antiques Show at the Park Avenue Armory, the Picasso Sculpture show at MOMA (Marie would not be happy with all the photos I took!), and yesterday’s Michigan vs. Penn State basketball game at Madison Square Garden (Michigan won – Go Blue!).
I wasn’t sure how I was going to end this post, except to say there are more vending paintings in my future. Then this morning I discovered a surprising and totally unexpected blog post on my site, called Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: A Tribute, from my daughter, self-proclaimed Laura “Webmaster” Sloofman.
Laura wrote a very cute entry (read it twice already) with lots of photos showing how she and her friend Sarah spent Saturday night painting. The girls were inspired by my Reese’s painting, which they projected on a TV screen, a techie idea worthy of two researchers turned artists for the evening. They did a great job on their own paintings, which you can see here. (Maybe Laura and I have another career sponsoring paint nights?!$)
Reading Laura’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: A Tribute post definitely sparked joy, which Marie Kondo would heartily approve. What a fitting close to this January, 2016 challenge – and a fitting beginning to a creative year