A November Project

This fall it inspired me to watch the participants in The Workroom outline their projects and follow through – discovering power and energy from small steps as part of a bigger whole. And now November begins, a whole month at home, a month ending in favorite festivities – but inviting a project.

The mother of my young friend made drawings for her Workroom project, and those, combined with reading Martin Gayford’s book, “A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney,” put drawings on my mind even more than usual. Hockney has a complicated relationship with photography but an ongoing, long-lasting passion for drawing. He’d approve of drawing for drawing’s sake – not to illustrate necessarily, but to explore.

Then, on a recent Design*Sponge podcast, I heard ceramicist Molly Hatch say that online resources from museums around the world are amazing. So the thought occurred – I could spend November at the Victoria and Albert, London’s world-famous museum of art and design, full of objects from real life, beautiful things, interesting things, inspiring curiosities to draw.

The V&A website offers “subject hubs” for each collection from architecture and design to fashion and textiles. Many of the 1,828,876 museum objects and pieces of art are online with a photo and a written description. Without printing, I could draw from their photos just by browsing the collections. (I wrote to the Museum and received a polite email back, granting permission to use the photos in their collection for reference.)

Sometimes visiting a museum sets up an initial overwhelm, and I’m glad to discover some one area where things have a relationship. A similar experience happened when I began to wander the corridors of the online collections, clicking on individual images, considering categories. I’m always curious about flowers in decoration – both disparaged and beloved – so, in the end, I decided to limit my looking to objects with flowers.

Wanting both a goal (something The Workroom participants were good at setting and achieving) and daily practice, I decided on a post a day. But it seems a lot to dump an email a day into the inboxes of loyal subscribers – so I’ll post a week’s worth next Friday.

Or you can see what treasures I find by following me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/gilmorekaty), or here next week, whichever works for you. And thank you for helping me be accountable!