A dream of mine came true today! I was mentioned in the Boston Globe by Arts Reporter Cate McQuaid in "THE TICKET, Things to do around Boston this weekend and beyond" about my Wordle Paintings Show at the Storefront Art Projects. The show can be viewed on Thursdays and Saturdays between 1-4pm through January, 25, 2025 at 83 Spring Street in Watertown, MA! Thank you!
I had a great time yesterday celebrating the opening of my Wordle paintings show at Storefront Art Projects at 83 Spring Street in Watertown, MA! The show is up through January 25, 2025, and the gallery hours are Thursdays and Saturdays from 1 - 4pm. It was absolutely wonderful meeting Tracy Bennett, the New York Times Wordle Editor, at the opening, and seeing old friends and making new friends! Thank you to everyone, especially Ellen at Storefront Art Projects for inviting me to exhibit, to Tracy for coming to Watertown from out of state, and to my sweetheart for being so supportive while I made the 18 pieces in the show over the past few months! And it was totally a coincidence that Tracy and I were both wearing dots (as you can see us standing by my painting with dots).
The Dates in a Life Walking Project 2024 is a year-long painting documenting the number of steps I walked each day. I have documented my steps in paintings since 2016.
I prefer to walk for exercise, as time permits, outside in addition to whatever other walking I do as I go about my day. My goal is to walk as much as I can every day. I use the Pedometer app on my iPhone to document my steps.
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 base monoprinted grid is violet. The Silver background paint shows the days I didn’t have, or make, time to walk for exercise, which lowered the number of steps I walked each day through June. In July, I switched to using Bronze because my work schedule and lunch break changed, which also affected my opportunity to walk at lunch time.
Underneath some individual days, there is a painted line of color to represent reasons that may lower or raise the number of steps I walked that day, such as snow, rainy, extreme hot or cold, illness, and vacation.
For April 8th (the second row on the left and to the right of the yellow icon for walking over 23,000 steps the day before), I documented when I saw the total solar eclipse in Watertown, NY by visually representing the 3 minutes and 22 seconds of totality.
I also walked 20,285 steps when visiting Seattle on November 25th and I walked 23,442 steps on December 31st, which also have yellow icons on those days.
The green dots in the middle of the icons indicate time healing from a foot injury which happened in May 2023.
I had Covid for the first time in June, and documented that by painting an overlay of positive Covid tests over the icons when I was sick or contagious. I did walk around my neighborhood those days but stayed away from other people.
The painting 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.
Happy New Year! December 2024 was not a good month for walking as evidenced by the icons with gold in the background, which were under 5000 steps, but I more than made up for it on New Years Even when I walked 23,442 steps which is represented by the yellow icon.
I have many hours to finish painting the lines dividing the months on my 2024 walking painting, which is quite large, and then I'll start working on 2025's. I am usually finished by the end of the year but not this time.
The sun was shining on the December section of my walking painting this morning, the very last day of 2024. There is only one icon left to add for how many steps I walk today, which is circled in red at the bottom. We’re hosting a free New Year’s Eve party for 2000-3000 people on the Rail Trail in Natick and I expect to walk well over 10,000 steps, hopefully close to 20,000 if I’m lucky. Happy New Year to all!
Come visit the Wordle Show at the Storefront Art Project located at 83 Spring Street in Watertown, MA from January 4 through 25, 2025 and see the 18 paintings I created using the patterns from my wordle puzzles.
The Opening is Saturday January 4, 2025 from 1-4pm. The gallery is open Thursday and Saturday afternoons from 1-4pm.
Tracy Bennett, the Wordle Editor for the New York Times is expected to join us at the Opening!
Read more at www.storefrontartprojects.com.
As I prepare to hang my Wordle paintings for a show at a nearby gallery, I am taking time to do last minute details. Here are nine 6" x 6" paintings drying on a drop cloth after I painted the edges of the boards white. I sort of like the combined chaos of the grids and what can be seen on the drop cloth underneath.