The Rules

Here are my rules:

1.  It is my blog/project/artwork.  I get to make the rules.  I get to change the rules.  I get to stop completely if I want to.  If you don't like it, make up your own.  If I don't like it, I get to change it.

2.  I wanted to start with a definition of "art" but I decided that instead, I will use that as one of my goals.  The goals of this enterprise are:
a) to see what I like,
b) to see if I can do it,
c) to discover what I think art is, and what I think craft is, and what I think doesn't fit in either category,
d) to figure out what I like doing, what is a chore, and what I simply LOOOVVVVEEE, and
e) other goals as I find them.

3.  I will create and complete "52" "small" art or craft "projects" and blog about them.  52 is one a week, however, my goal is just to complete 52 in a year, not necessarily one per week.  The 52 weeks, 52 projects relationship is just to provide some indication of how I am progressing towards my goal.  If after ten weeks, I have only completed two, I may have to rethink what I am doing.

4.  Small means I am going try for easily completed, quick to do, simple projects, that will take perhaps one evening to complete.  If I was working, I would be doing this in my spare time, what there was of it, on free evenings or weekends, in between the regular stuff of living like laundry, grocery shopping, TV watching, etc.  Don't worry, I usually have nothing whatsoever to do between 2 am and 4 am so I will have plenty of time to complete these.

5.  Project means that the "whatever" is a completed item.  However, this does not mean, necessarily, that I have something now ready to wear, use, or gift.  The "project" may be the center medallion for a quilt, an interesting border quilting, fiber dyed to some "artistic" specifications to be later spun and knitted, the front intarsia portion of a sweater, or some other piece of what might be thought of as a completed project.  However, my rule is that the artistic piece of the action is completed.  IE, if an intarsia portion of a sweater, the head and neck of a kitten still missing it's body, doesn't count, nor would fiber dyed pink to which I am later going to add purple dye.  I know what I mean by completed project, but can't seem to define it succinctly (or spell succinct, sussinct?  no that is not right, succinst, no, lets go back to succinct).

BTW, designing the "page" that this blog appears on was a project in itself.  It took several hours to get the picture to show the way I wanted, the Title and Subtitle to show up on the picture background with the "right" amount of contrast, and other items to appear the way I liked.  So I think it would qualify as a "project" if I had done it within the 52 designated weeks. 

6.  Art or craft means, well, I'm not sure.  Somebody told me yesterday that to them, craft meant you followed some one else's pattern, basically, although perhaps you made slight changes.  However, I don't think this is really craft.  I have always thought of art and craft this way, that craft created useful, reproducible items, whereas art just created beauty.  I am not sure that this is a good or useful definition either, though.  I know that if I ever resort to crayon lines on a piece of paper to create my weekly project, I am not doing what I set out to in this blog.  I want to create some completed piece of art each week, but I can't be more specific than that.  Hopefully more definition will arise out of the experience.

7.  Open for later additions to the rules.

I hope that you too will be able to set the rules for some part of your life.