Thought Seeds – a public art project
Last month I walked away from social media again, but this time I think for good. I’m poking around on Bluesky a little, because already I’m feeling the effects of being completely invisible, even though I’m not sure why it matters. Yesterday was an acute omg, I’m so fucking alone here feeling because I haven’t been doing the things I should be doing to fill the void, i.e., leaving the house and being around other people. That, and I’d spent my entire weekend writing about things that upset me and New Jersey was on fire and the dense smoke was upsetting and made me feel off-kilter.
I know from past experience that going through life this way for the next four years isn’t going to be sustainable, so I’ve thinking a lot about how to dig into art and writing in a way that not only helps me, but also others, navigate the stress of what’s to come. As always, thinking was never going to fix anything, and the answer didn’t arrive until I sat my ass in the chair in the Art Attic and started working.
I’ve been shuffling around two boxes of leftover postcards from the Waffles and Wine Art Show that I wasn’t sure what to do with. The back has a handy-dandy QR code which I can point anywhere. The front, though, is art from a body of work that I am finished with and won’t be returning to.
I pulled five postcards out of the box, collaged dictionary pages to the front of them, and gave them a wash of watercolor. I was thinking of making collages similar to the ones I was making a few years ago:
While I was working on them, the idea of Thought Seeds bubbled up. Over the summer, I was thinking about creating an oracle deck based on plants or flowers, their meaning, and vintage seed package inspired artworks. (I still may do this!)
But what if Thought Seeds could be something different? What if I planted small artworks all over the place as I move through my days?
I get excited when I find pennies from heaven and other little surprises from the universe – a tiny, surf softened piece of a shell, a coral branch, a green feather, pinecones and pine needles. They seem to come to me in moments where I’m doubting my path, or making a decision, or feel alone and invisible. I’ve been collecting them for years. They sit in a bowl on my dresser, where I appreciate these tiny miracles each day while I’m putting my deodorant on.
What if I could share with others the experience of discovering tiny miracles?
I go to Art Basel in Miami every year, and a couple of years I’ve done something similar. The first HeART Basel project was crochet hearts. The second, old poured painting canvases cut into hearts and collaged with images and text from 1930s Modern Mechanix magazines.
I pulled out a 1970s women’s magazine and started cutting out text. I collaged a kid doodle. I painted. I drew. By the end of the weekend, I had five postcard sized collages ready to share with the world. If you’d like to see the collection so far, they’re all going to live in this portfolio, which I’ll update as I finish them. Because I have no real plan for the art itself and am staying open to inspiration, I’m curious to see how the art evolves over time!
I will plant these Thought Seeds in places I think they might flourish – shops, bookstores, on the train, in Ubers, at libraries. Hopefully the person who finds them will reach out to me and say hello! I’d like to hear the story of how they found their Thought Seed!
My hope is that these Thought Seeds blossom into a community, that the people who find them are willing to share their individual story to become a part of the larger one. Technology is gnawing away at our understanding of what it is to be a human in this world, and this is my small way of pushing back against that and forming connections with the people around me away from social media.
We all have a story. We all want to be seen and appreciated for the person we are, not the person we’re performing online.
You can be a Thought Seed gardener too! You don’t need to be an artist or turn it into a whole production like I have. Leaving a short note or a happy sticker in an unexpected place or smiling at the person walking down the street are also excellent ways to be a Thought Seed gardener.
It feels really good to have a little bit of focus right now, because I can’t spend the next four years dunking my head in misery and upset and stressful news. I tried that last time and ended up with panic attacks, tummy troubles, an inability to swallow for an extended period of time, and four broken teeth. I am NOT doing that to myself again. Putting something good out into the world despite waves hands all of that is how I fight back.
I encourage you to find your focus, too, because the world is a better place when people are digging into their talents and gifts and sharing them.
A midcentury advertisement for correspondence cartooning school has been sitting on my art desk for ages. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but I’d recently picked up the books that were part of the course on offer and kinda sorta loosely thought about doing a TikTok series where I attempted to learn to draw (ha!) before I walked away from social media. I added a piece of art from my box of kid doodles and some of my own doodles.
Yesterday I planted it while grocery shopping.