The Dates in a Life Project is a year-long painting project documenting the number of steps I walk each day.
It was a challenge to walk in July because of the hot weather. I did my best to get to 10,000 or more steps as often as I could. This summer, I've been trying to walk in the morning before it gets too hot, and in the evening when it cools before sunset, something I can't do in the winter because it's too cold at the beginning and end of the day.
To keep track of steps, I use the Health app in my iPhone.
I use a system of symbols to represent each thousand steps. Instead of showing exactly how many I walk. The black icons represent up to 9999 steps walked each day, red represents 10,000-19,999 steps and yellow represents 20,000-29,999 steps.
The daily background color changes season-to-season. It was Teal Blue for Winter, then Green for Spring, and on June 22, the first day of Summer, I changed the background to Yellow. Autumn will be Indian Yellow Hue, and when Winter starts again in December, I'll change the color back to Teal Blue.
The daily background color is to document my daily steps in fractions of 250 steps. As an example, after 2000 steps (which would be the icon with no paint), I'm painting colors to show as close as I can to 2250, 2500, 2750, and then up to 2999, instead of then rounding up to 3000 steps.
This painting measures 37.5" x 34" and is created with monoprinted textures of a construction fence as the background, handstamped rubber erasers on fabric which are collaged on the background grid, as well as handpainting and stitching on stiffened fabric.
