Saturday, November 2, 2019

Update: Dates in a Life Project 2019


October is over and I'm closer to finishing my Dates in a Life Project, a year-long painting documenting the number of steps I walk each day. 

I used to use the Health app in my iPhone to keep track of steps, but now I'm using the Pedometer app. Apple reworked Health and it isn't easily showing the weekly number of steps, miles, and stairs climbed.

To represent each thousand steps walked, I use a system of symbols 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. 

I also use a daily background color 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.
The daily background color changes season-to-season in this painting. The daily background color is now Indian Yellow Hue, representing Autumn. It was Teal Blue for Winter, then Green for Spring, then a bright yellow for the summer. When Winter starts again in December, I'll change the color back to Teal Blue.

This painting measures 47.5" 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.