Making a new piece of jewellery every day for a whole year
is an ambitious project.
Documenting it and blogging my results with photographic
evidence is an even bigger task to undertake. A year is a very long time to
stick to a demanding routine and a very short time in terms of trying to get a
lot of work done and bring a crazy dream to fruition. You may be wondering how
I came to dare myself into this.
I graduated my Advanced Diploma in Jewellery & Object
Design in 2010.
2011 started well, with exhibitions and recognition, full of
promise.
Then life, as it often does, interrupted my plans. I
couldn't spend as much time as I wanted in the studio, I lost the impetus and
didn't achieve all I had set out to do. Clearly, I needed to do something to
reawaken my creative spark.
The turn of the year seemed the ideal time to turn things
around - and what a year! 2012 is a leap year. It is also the year in which I
will turn 50. Surely an auspicious time to undertake something daring?
I decided to set myself an audacious goal. Not a nice, safe
one I could comfortably reach, but a big, difficult, challenging one that I
knew would be hard to achieve, but would bring me so much satisfaction if I
could do it.
When I first thought of attempting to make a piece of jewellery
every day for an entire year, I KNEW it was crazy, but I couldn't stop thinking
about it.
If I couldn’t find time to get myself into the studio for
most of 2011, why would 2012 be any different? The answer to that is simply
this: because I want it to be.
I’m not unrealistic. I know there will be days when it’s
hard to get anything done – probably even days when it’s pretty much impossible
– because I’m unwell, or somebody else is, because I’ve run out of gas for my
torch, or there’s a power outage, or for any one of a hundred reasons. So,
there have to be some rules in place to make this work.
1. The ideal is 1
piece per day and that’s what I will aim to do.
Note: I’m not
talking about complex, intricate showpieces here. If it’s insane to try to do one
of those in a day (and it is!), 366 in a row is not going to happen. The pieces
will mostly be simple things – exercises if you like. They might be (and
ideally will be) finished, wearable items, but there may be days when what I
produce is a test piece or series of experiments, and that would be acceptable
output, provided it’s properly documented.
2. If there is a
day, or a number of days on which I can’t finish something, then I must make
two or more pieces a day until the backlog is gone. Again, the ideal is 1 piece
every day for a whole year. If the reality is 1 piece for every day of the
year, so be it.
One way or another, my intention is to finish up with 366
finished pieces.
3. I sometimes like
to work in series or batches. If that means I make seven pieces in seven days,
and they’re all finished on day seven, that is acceptable. Daily progress must
be documented in the same way as if I were making an individual piece each day.
4. If I have time
and inclination to do so, it will also be permissible for me to accumulate
partly made items as an emergency supply to finish on other days. The item will
count as the piece for the day on the day it is finished and documented. Again,
the ideal would be to make something from scratch, and while I will attempt to
do this as far as humanly possible, there are bound to be some days when I’ll
need my emergency supply. I will also attempt to make and accumulate a supply
of assorted findings – ear wires, catches, brooch fittings, etc, so that I have
these items ready to go instead of having to make the parts from scratch for
every new piece. Sensible studio practice, really, and something I should
already be doing anyway.
5. On really
desperate days, or for pieces where it seems appropriate, I may use some commercial
parts. I will endeavour to keep this option to a minimum. The emphasis is on
the handmade.
6. Some of the
pieces may be experimental, unusual and make use of found or donated materials.
I will be looking to accumulate an interesting selection as the year
progresses. If you’d like to see me use a certain material or item, feel free
to suggest and/or donate or attempt to sell it to me. I’ll consider these,
though I can’t guarantee using everything that turns up.
7. Lucky dips. This will be my strategy for the
inevitable days when I get really stuck and just can’t decide what to make.
I’ll have a little set of boxes or bags for categories including materials,
item type, theme, etc. These will contain slips of paper with words on them
like silver, titanium, pendant, earrings, ocean, jazz and so forth.
So, for example, I might go to my item box and draw ‘ring’.
Materials might be one or two dips (maybe bags for metals and other materials)
and I might draw ‘silver’ and ‘plastic’. If I still didn’t have an idea, I
could turn to my themes dip, and I might get and image or emotion to work with,
say ‘anger’. You get the idea. I’m open to suggestions as to what might be in
the lucky dips.
8. As I go along,
I’ll be keeping a visual diary pertaining to the project. I may occasionally
scan and share snippets of that, or perhaps just include a few quotes from the
days working notes in my blog posts. The commitment to blog is the other major
component of this project. Not only will I make a piece every day, but I will
also photograph the piece and post it here, with some comments about the work
or how the project is going. Basically, this will be an active (and I hope, to
some extent, interactive) journal of my year as a creative artist.
9. This project is
intended to get me into the studio and get me working again. The pieces will
have to be fairly basic if I’m to have any hope of staying on track. In order
to keep moving forward as an artist, I will also have to keep making other,
sometimes more involved work. I’m thinking the Dare 366 pieces will fill the
role of daily warm up exercises, to get the creative juices flowing, or just
plain force me to get some work done.
I still want to get some work out into the marketplace, via retail
outlets, galleries and exhibitions. Some of this may relate in some way to 366
in 2012, and if so, I’ll include mention of it here. Otherwise, you can see
what I’ve been up to on my other blog, Betty’s Shed, which I’ll attempt to
update from time to time through the year.
10. Part of my blog
will be to include a numerical tag, which will indicate where I’m at each day,
so you’ll know whether I’m on track or carrying a deficit. (I hope not!).
So. Come January 5, if all has gone to plane, the post will
bear the tag 5/5 (i.e., five pieces made and it’s day five. I want to see that.
I don’t want to be looking at 37/41 or 243/359 (Horror!).
11. Somebody asked
me whether the pieces would be for sale. At this stage, it is my intention to
keep them all until the conclusion of the project, as I may wish to look into
having some of the items professionally photographed, or to exhibit or
catalogue my efforts in some way. This is, of course, negotiable if somebody
desperately wants to buy one or some of the pieces. I’m a recent graduate and
my tools and materials do not come cheap. Some income would be a splendid
thing. It may be a matter of making a similar piece to order, or making a
borrow-back arrangement if needs be. Otherwise, I’ll be accumulating them all
as a 3 dimensional diary of my year, and once I’ve satisfied myself by
cataloguing, exhibiting, or whatever I may decide to do to round off this crazy
scheme, I will then price the items and make them available for sale. After
all, if I want to keep making, I’ll need to be able to buy more materials!
12. If you’ve read
this far, thank you. I will endeavour to reward your interest with posts
containing less words and some actual pictures.
366 in 2012. The challenge begins!
