experiment adventure

My challenge last week was that I had a three-day weekend in the midst of pre-exhibit stress. I'm definitely learning that obsessing over projects like this isn't helpful at all. This exhibit is really showing me the power of giving it space. The roadblocks I keep running into almost miraculously dissolve if I walk away and come back later. Delightful and inventive solutions have been arriving on their own timetable. Still, last weekend's approach of sort of trying to forget that the project even existed meant that on Monday evening the reality came crashing down in a psychically devastating way. Let's just say that putting one's head in the sand can be the:



So this weekend I decided to invite this project home with me on my own terms. Writing the introduction for an exhibit takes time and space and quiet, hard to find in my workplace. And I really didn't want a repeat of the trauma of the end of last weekend. I wanted to see how I could bring some joy to this process. I blocked out a chunk of time to work on the intro yesterday afternoon and reminded myself of how my process works. Lots and lots of drafts, some snacking, some spacing out, some paging through books, writing down lots of quotations, much imagining, and at the end a decent first draft to give some space and read with fresh eyes on Monday. I think the ingredient that was most needed, both for myself and the project was: