The Curse and Promise of What’s Next

I'm a slow rolling stone that still picks up moss, only to use it in my next project.

I’m writing this from The Shed while an ignored unfinished project sits behind me and stares at my back. It’s been that way for over a year, and I can’t help but feel looming dread every time I set foot in the studio. It’s not a canvas or shop project, but a chair, mostly neon pink, missing a cushion, and desperate to live out a life of fulfillment as a completed concept.

Although I haven’t touched it other than moving it out of the way of whatever else I’m doing here, I feel bad that the chair hasn’t progressed. A friend graciously helped me for free by creating a base for the seat, and I thanked him for his generosity by letting the chair collect dust.

Stop staring at me!

At the end of 2023, I had a bit of an existential crisis around my art and decided that I didn’t want to make any for a while. I had just finished prepping for an open studio event in my city that brought lackluster results compared to other years, and I was burned out. The chair was the last project I put any effort into that year, but before the holidays came, I shut the doors on the studio for an indefinite amount of time.

That time is now, and though most of my projects have involved fixing problems with The Shed itself, I’m finally ready to tackle some interesting, different, and wild ideas, like turning an old Victorian-style chair into a work of art that you can’t sit on.

I’m still working on the chair concept in my head because it’s ambitious, and I want to approach it with some sort of plan. However, I know this project is going to set me up for more wild and different projects, and if I’m being honest, I’m a little apprehensive about that.

One of my biggest problems in 2023 was my inability to stick to one type of projector or another. I was in this wild exploration period of my creative life, and it was fun but not lucrative because people didn’t know what to think of all the half-baked projects.

In early 2024, I chose to put the art projects away and, instead, focus my energy on what I felt would be the project to take my career to the next level—my now-retired newsletter, The Hungry. If you’ve been here for more than a minute, you know what happened there.

Now I’m back, working on a combo of creative projects, my Shed to-do list, and freely chasing down any high-concept ideas again. Though it feels good, am I making the right decision?

The Curse

I call this the curse of what’s next—being so wide open to new ideas that I forget to find the connective tissue that binds them all together. That’s not the worst thing to happen to an artist, but I know from experience that doing random projects with reckless abandon and no cohesive through-line can create disassociation with fans.

However, I think I’ve found the answer, and it exists in a concept I’ve named Zero Point—the moment life makes a left turn toward a new existence.

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The Promise

On the other side of the curse is the promise, which is not the opposite of the curse, but the opportunity within it. Unfortunately, it took me more than a year of departure from my art to realize my own opportunity.

I had a memory recall recently of an old Nat Geo documentary about what would happen to our urban landscapes if humans went extinct. The scientists in the show inferred that, assuming it wasn’t a nuclear catastrophe which destroyed everything on earth, nature could over take most urban environments that weren’t destroyed by failing infrastructure conditions within two decades. I’ve been fascinated by the concept ever since.

Photo by David Arrowsmith on Unsplash

Maybe this is a little dark, and my wife probably wouldn’t appreciate it, but I imagine what would happen to my home if left unattended for two decades. Would the structure retain? What would the garden look like, or the patio furniture? Would the squirrels find a way to raid our nut stash (I’m guilty of feeding a few of them, which my wife also doesn’t appreciate). There are a lot of vintage homes in my city—what will they look like when nature takes control? How much of the classic architecture would remain?

I don’t remember what made me think of that Nat Geo documentary, but for several weeks now, I can’t stop thinking about it.

I’m not a fatalist that wishes for the end of humanity (although, it’s not an impossible idea in our current political climate), but rather, I think it’s a beautiful idea that no matter what happens, nature will always return and thrive.

In this world I’m creating in my head, Zero Point refers to the moment humans no longer exist and the nature reclaims it’s space. What happens to a car, a sofa left on the curb, a boom box strapped to the back of an ebike, or a pink Victorian chair left half-finished?

That word mark is too dramatic, but it felt appropriate in the moment.

The end result of the chair project will not be as literal as this image above, but this is the concept that will tie (almost) all projects going forward. I want to make pieces that embody the idea that nothing on earth is sacred or safe from Zero Point, and I’m excited to see the weird future to come.

And yes, there will be a video, and members get it first. All the cool kids are upgrading to member status, just saying.