100 Days of Collecting My Life

An ordinary life, a daily collage, and the art of paying attention.

This morning, I went for a walk.

Nothing particularly extraordinary happened. I do this most every morning. I followed a familiar route, noticed the changing season, and gathered a few things along the way. A leaf. A stem. Various seed pods. Little bits of the world that caught my attention.

I brought them home.

And later, in my studio, I made a collage.

It's just six inches square. A small arrangement of things collected, considered, and composed. Nothing monumental. But when I finished, I placed it in a basket on my worktable, where it will be joined by another tomorrow.

And another the day after that.

One hundred days. One hundred collages. One hundred 6" squares in a basket, waiting for my ordinary life archive.

One hundred small pieces of evidence that I was here, paying attention.

The life I'm already living

I've been thinking and writing quite a lot lately about the ordinary life.

About the things we notice, the things we keep, and the curious little collections we accumulate along the way. About the possibility that the life we're already living might be the most interesting material we have to work with.

I've called this practice Collect | Your Life.

At its heart is a simple invitation:
Notice it. Collect it. Keep it.

A walk around the neighborhood. The color of the sky just before rain. A scrap of paper tucked inside an old book. A grocery receipt, a conversation, the last flowers of the season.

These things might not seem particularly important.

But I've come to believe that an interesting life isn't necessarily one filled with extraordinary experiences. It might simply be a life we find interesting enough to notice.

And when we begin paying attention, something wonderful happens.

We start collecting.

Not necessarily more things, although I certainly have my share of those. We collect impressions, colors, textures, memories, stories. Evidence of the places we've been and the days we've lived.

And sometimes, if we're curious enough, we make something from what we've gathered.

That's the part I want to explore.

A hundred little experiments

So I've given myself an assignment.

Beginning today, October 21, I'm going to make one 6" × 6" collage every day for 100 days.

Each one will begin with something from my ordinary life. Something I've noticed, gathered, remembered, or wondered about.

Maybe a leaf from my morning walk will become the starting point. Maybe a color I saw in the garden. A photograph. A scrap from the mail. A sentence that won't leave me alone.

Maybe some days I'll begin with nothing more than a feeling.

I'll bring these things into my studio and see what happens.

There might be paint and paper, stitching and drawing, printmaking and mark-making. There will almost certainly be old book pages and bits of ephemera, because I seem incapable of making anything without them.

I expect some collages will be lovely.

I expect some will be rather dreadful.

And I suspect the most interesting ones might be the ones I never could have imagined making when I began.

That's part of the adventure.

I'm not trying to make 100 masterpieces. I'm not even trying to make 100 collages that look like they belong together.

I'm interested in what happens when I give my attention to the life unfolding around me, and then give that attention somewhere to go.

I notice because I make. I make because I notice.

I wonder what 100 days of that might teach me.

A basket full of days

Before I made my first collage, I cut a stack of 100 squares from heavy paper.

There was something deeply satisfying about seeing them all together. One hundred little blank spaces, waiting to become something.

Then I found a basket.

I wanted a place to keep the finished pieces, somewhere I could watch the collection grow. Not filed away in a drawer or hidden in a box, but right there on my worktable.

An accumulating record of ordinary days.

I love imagining that basket a month from now. Or two months from now. The papers curling a little, the colors and textures beginning to mingle, the stack getting thicker.

And eventually, 100 little collages gathered together.

What will they tell me about these days?

What will I notice about my own life that I might otherwise have missed?

Will certain colors appear again and again? Certain shapes or materials? Will I discover new ways of working, new stories I want to tell?

I don't know.

And I rather like not knowing.

Perhaps these pieces will eventually become an artist's book. Or a folio. Perhaps they'll inspire larger work, or an entirely different collection.

For now, I'm happy to let them become whatever they become.

The basket is enough.

Making an archive of an ordinary life

I've been calling my growing collection of essays, observations, and creative practices The Ordinary Life Archive.

The idea is simple: Build an archive of the life you're living while you're living it.

Not a carefully edited record of the big occasions and important milestones.

Not a travel stuffed full of memories of Paris or Yellowstone or a weekend at the beach.

The ordinary days.

The in-between moments.

The little things we might otherwise forget.

I've always loved old photographs, handwritten letters, worn books, and the mysterious bits of paper people leave behind. I love imagining the lives attached to them.

Someone saved that ticket. Someone pressed that flower. Someone thought that little scrap was worth keeping.

And now, years later, it tells a story.

What if we approached our own lives with that same curiosity?

What if, instead of waiting for something memorable to happen, we began making a record of the days we're actually living?

A photograph becomes a memory. A scrap becomes a page. A color becomes a painting. A walk becomes a collection.

An ordinary Wednesday becomes part of an archive.

For me, these daily collages will be another way of doing just that.

A small, tangible record of the world as I experienced it on a particular day.

Not everything needs to be beautiful. Not everything needs to make sense. Not everything needs to become art, for that matter.

Sometimes noticing is enough.

Sometimes keeping is enough.

But I want to see what happens when I take that next little step and make something.

The practice is the point

I should probably tell you that I'm not planning to turn this into a daily social media challenge.

I'll share some of the collages, of course. I'll tell you about the things I'm discovering, the happy accidents, the frustrations, and whatever else unfolds.

But I don't want the work to become something I make for the sake of posting it.

I want to make it for the sake of making it.

I want the first thought of my day to be curiosity, not content.

I want to go for a walk and wonder what I might find. I want to bring a handful of ordinary treasures into the studio and give myself permission to play.

I want to make room for the unexpected.

I want to notice. And I want to make.

And I want to find out what happens when a small creative act becomes part of the rhythm of an ordinary life.

There will be busy days. Distracted days. Days when I don't feel particularly inspired.

Those days belong in the archive, too.

Perhaps especially those days.

Because the point isn't to manufacture an interesting life for the sake of making interesting art.

It's to discover the interesting life that I'm living on an ordinary Wednesday.

What might you collect?

You certainly don't need to make 100 collages to begin collecting your life.

You don't even need to think of yourself as an artist.

You might keep a notebook beside your bed. Photograph something beautiful on your morning walk. Save a scrap of paper from a lovely afternoon. Write down a sentence someone said that made you laugh.

You might make a little collection of colors. Or leaves. Or stories.

You might simply begin asking yourself a question at the end of each day:

What did I notice today that I want to remember?

That's where it begins.

With attention.

With curiosity.

With the understanding that the ordinary life you're living is already full of material.

And that you don't need to wait for something extraordinary to happen before you begin making something meaningful from it.

As for me, there's a basket on my worktable with one little collage inside.

Ninety-nine to go.

I have no idea what it will hold when I'm finished.

But I have a feeling it will be more than paper.

Here's to collecting the life we're living. One ordinary day at a time.