A Year of 1000 Visions

I’m going to call 2011 the year of 1000 visions.  I’m calling it that because sometimes that’s what it seems like.  Between the work I’ve done on MAWMAP, and the upwards of 800 digital images, and the (nearly 500) pages of written material, I have recorded well over a thousand items.  1000 visions, to be pretentious and overbearing.  So I’m calling the year “A Year of 1000 Visions” and to put them in perspective, I am going to publish a book called “200: Excerpts from The Year of 1000 Visions”.

The book concept is a simple one.  I’m going to pick my favorite 125 images from among my drawings, paintings. photographs and digital images.  I’m also going to select my favorite 75 items of written word. That might be poems, essays, blog entries, or writing exercises. 

I’m going to design a book incorporating all of these elements, and then I am going to self-publish it and sell it online.  I will also prepare an E-book version to sell online for Kindle and other E-readers. 

And finally, I’m going to select my favorite 50 images to merchandise on tee shirts, mugs, and whatever else is available out there. 

My goals are simple.  The first one is to put the work where people can see it, and to create a less nebulous concept than the loose collection of 1000 items embodies.  Second, to use “200” as a launching pad for my updated website and a platform from which to begin offering substantive workshops on Art, Writing, Creativeness, and several other topics. 

The coming year will herald a significant change in how I operate.  For the past few decades, my work has occurred basically behind closed doors.  I’ve been making things – lots of things – without any commercial intent at all. 

Its time for me to harvest what I have planted.

I decided when I was still in High School that I did not want to begin my “:career” until I was in my fifties.  I had just read Anthony Scaduto’s book about Bob Dylan, and was disturbed by the thought that Bob had built a public personae at a very young age, which he then had to live up to for the rest of his life. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I love Bob’s work, all of it.  But what I saw in the A.S. biography was a map to a place that I didn’t want to go. 

I guess you could say I also took Robert Frost’s advice, and took a path less traveled by. 

Over the years I’ve run a large university art gallery. taken a degree in art, learned about ocean Navigation onboard US Naval vessels, played music in the streets of Boston and Cambridge Massachusetts, did some pretty serious gigging too.  I’ve worked as a camp counselor, a kindergarten teacher, a workshop instructor, a trip leader, a recording artist, and a graphic designer. I’ve acted in community theater productions, founded and later disbanded an Artists group, constructed movie theater seats in a factory, answered customer service calls for a Medicare insurance program, mastered both Windows and Mac computers, and spent large periods of time working exclusively on a series of illuminated manuscripts.  During the years I’ve been active, I’ve kept the art and writing to myself.  I wanted to make the work first, and worry about selling it when the time came, and I’m increasingly certain that the time is now. 

I remember a comment that another of my favorite musicians made upon release of an album he’d been working on for ten years.  He commented that he’d made the album on his own, financed it himself, made it without the dictates of any commercial necessity.  Finally, when it was done, he said that now the work was done, he’d do whatever was necessary to sell the product. 

That’s where I’m at now.  Its time to start doing everything I can to sell my product, and to make something of lasting value out of the constituent parts. 

My book, “200: Excerpts from A Year of 1000 Visions” first step on that intention. 

Two years ago I wrote my first (terrible, I might add!) novel, As I write this I am taking a break from writing my second novel, which may prove to be as beastly as the first. Then again, it may be the best thing ever written. I don’t know, and I don’t care, For me its not the product that is important – it’s the making.