Kaleidoscope Expressions of Daily Creative Practice

My exploration of Digital Image Making class culminated with a final installation of my daily creative practice work. The charge was to carve out time each day, or almost each day, to dedicate to a creative practice, in whatever shape that took. As I spend my days in front of a computer, I was seeking to create analog work, perhaps with a digital component tying them all together at the end. As it turns out, that's exactly what happened - but a lot that happened in between too.

My love of textiles runs deep - combining fabric, paper, wire, found images and objects together and creating something new out of them is a blast for me. And so I focused my daily practice on creating small found object mixed media collages, all strung together in sequential order.

The intentionality of carving out this time was something that I both looked forward to and dreaded. I found this time - usually only about 10-15 minutes - to be extremely meditative and therapeutic for me, even though making that time was increasingly difficult as my life and responsibilities changed throughout the semester. Within just a few months I went from having a toddler to having a toddler plus being pregnant with his little brother; I went from not being in grad school to being in grad school; I traveled with family across the country and without my family half-way across the country for work as my first time away from my little guy; I went from doing my job to accepting a fantastic and challenging promotion. Let's just say - my already busy life started shape-shifting in ways often beyond my control.

These changes - these ebbs and flows, these challenges and joys - show up in my work. What began in my first few pieces as simply nice compositions, started telling a story - a visual journal - chronicling four months of my life at the end of 2014. A big year.

Here is a collection of my 23 pieces of mixed media work. Each piece is titled and representative of the story being told through the piece. (Click to enlarge and see details.)

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The culmination of this work landed in a kaleidoscope/mandala-like format. I loved how the textures came through, how the collages were obscured yet still portray a certain energy, how the very nature of a kaleidoscope resembles patterns and repetition found in fabric design. I'd love to play more with this concept through subtle animations - twisting and changing form as a kaleidoscope does, or kaleidoscopes shifting and morphing into one another as the work progresses in time. All to be explored, all in good time.

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And if you want to see all the pieces together in one place, I made this little poster. (Click to enlarge.)