This Week from Lisa Congdon: Getting Motivated for Creativity in 2010

I am one of those people who always has to have some sort of creative project. For the most part, my creative projects are built into the way I make my living: preparing for art shows, collaborating with other artists, working on illustration projects for clients. This year, I decided to motivate myself even further to be creative every day by inventing for myself a daily project for 2010. On January 1, I launched A Collection a Day, 2010 .



A Collection a Day, 2010 is a project that will span exactly one year, from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010. On each of those 365 days, I will photograph or draw (and occasionally paint) one collection. Most of the collections are real and exist in my home or studio; those I will photograph. Some are imagined; those I will draw or (occasionally) paint.




Since I was a young girl, I have been obsessed both with collecting and with arranging, organizing and displaying my collections. (You can see a profile here on Poppytalk about my just a few of my collections from 2008). This project is my attempt to document my collections, both the real and the imagined. Some of my collections are so large that I will need to photograph them separately over several days. I will likely not attempt to photograph collections in which the individual pieces are large in size or awkward in shape (i.e. my art collection or vintage enamel dishware collection). The only rule is that I must photograph or draw a whole or part of a collection each day for 365 days and post the result here on this blog.


The practice of collecting and documenting collections is as old as the hills. I want onlookers to know that I do not profess to be doing anything new or unique or ingenious. I am embarking on this project because I love my collections, and I want to document them in a way that makes sense to me, and share them with whoever might be interested in looking at them.


Yearly projects that folks share via the internet are also not a new concept. Countless creative people have been individually and collaboratively launching year-long, 365 day, or 52 week projects and sharing them through Flickr and through blogs over the past several years. Yearly projects help us to stay focused, tell our story in a structured way, and keep us motivated to live a creative life.
Will I run out of stuff to photograph or draw over time? Will it remain inspiring and enjoyable? Only time will tell. I hope if you are interested you will come along with me on A Collection a Day, 2010 . What project(s) have you started this year?