A big transition and transitory art

It’s been a year, and what better time to look back at a year than Thanksgiving? I abandoned this blog because I got a new full-time job last December. I love my work, but it does mean less free time for art, and I tend to choose ‘doing art’ over ‘writing about doing art’, when I have to choose. Now, though, as I’m thinking of a year at the new job, I want to share art from that new job — and my new embrace-the-transitory art form: dry erase markers.

It wasn’t much at the beginning, because it took me awhile to accumulate all the available colors (I only stole one marker from a conference room, I swear. And it was yellow, which you shouldn’t be using to take meeting notes anyway).

The natural area behind my office provides a lot of inspiration.

…and so do the chickens that I got in April.

…and then there’s all the rest. Sometimes they even have to do with work! (The dog, believe it or not, was a visual reminder of a theory of how we browse for information. Really!).

Coworkers say it’s a shame that they get wiped off. I tell them it’s like the office version of a Tibetan sand painting, and we need to learn to embrace transitory beauty (and transitory silliness).