(This is my 58th experience of this monthly ritual of acknowledging my inevitable death by writing a love letter to my life. — Joyce Wycoff)
The Great Art Landfill Project
There are some universal nightmares … like facing a finals exam for a class you forgot to attend the whole semester, being nude in an inappropriate situation, or becoming a bag lady. Others are more specific to certain conditions in life, such as being a creator of stuff.
Whether the creator makes art, poetry, pottery, photos, novels, songs, or personal journals, there will come a time when the nightmare appears as a vision of a huge dumpster overflowing with your lovingly crafted “art”. Suddenly, you realize that what was once a far distant thing called death is now coming closer, preparing to not only take you to some unknown realm but also gathering all that you have created and treasured into a dumpster bound for dusty thrift stores and endless landfills.
Since about forty percent of the world’s population consider themselves creative, there’s a tidal wave of lovingly created stuff that will eventually wind up homeless. That’s a pretty negative scenario, so let’s look at it in a different way.
Again presumably, the act of creating something is joyful; why else would people do it? And the act of sharing it, whether it’s sold or given away, extends the joy to the art receiver(s) (at least most of the time.) For every “best seller,” there is a multitude of creative pieces only esteemed by mom & company. So, let’s say that, on average, each piece of art is joyfully received by 6.72 art admirers. Do the math and ask a different question. If the average creator generates and shares joy for 20 years, would that joy of creating and sharing offset the cost of maintaining the landfill?
Or maybe there’s an even better idea. What if every baby born were given a Welcome to the World of Art package? Instead of sending art to landfills, the creative legacies of artists would be assembled into packages for every new born. Each child would grow up with a special legacy gift of creative expression and joy.
There could possibly be a few issues with the execution of this idea.
However, perhaps the potlatch idea could be a first step.
What if each of us artists, as we head toward the departure door, would take responsibility for distributing our left-over art in the most joyful way possible?
As a digital artist and writer, I have a head start in avoiding the landfill because all my art exists in pixels in my computer. Dispose of two computers and scrub the iCloud and poof! gone. However, that fast action doesn’t create any additional joy so I’m back to the potlatch idea.
The whole idea of homeless art deserves more thought, but for now, here’s Potlatch #2: Visual Prompts. Over the years I’ve taken a lot of odd photos that might stimulate a strange thought or two while journaling or trying to think about a new idea or project. To these images, I’ve added some of my quotes that seemed appropriate. (Is it complete hubris to collect and share my own quotes? Too late to worry about that now.)
Anyway, if this particular potlatch turns out to be of value, I’d love to hear from you … actually, I’d love to hear from you even if it isn’t useful. ;-) Also … feel free to share these files with anyone else who might be interested. There’s one pdf for printing … and one flipbook which you can flip through while journaling.
Click here: Flipbook: Visual Prompts
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