Wishes, Stars, And Artist’s Statements

The Wishing Star Project is now officially underway. Thirty-two wishes have been transcribed onto strips of paper and folded into stars. The ones collected so far cover politics and economics (macro and micro), general wishes for good things for the world, and specific wishes for good things for individuals. The majority arrived after I posted about the project on the Book_Arts-List, but I hope that word will gradually spread.

I need to find a way to encourage people who visit the site to actually leave a wish. (Please leave a wish here.) Perhaps I should have done this as a Kickstarter project and asked people to pay for the privilege of making a wish. People will apparently chip in for just about anything.

I have planned this as a two year project, though there was a brief moment last Wednesday after a sudden influx of wishes when I thought I might finish in a year. I have cut some strips of paper in advance, but I’m considering doing some paste papers to add  more colour variation. The stars I have done for previous projects were all made from magazine pages, so there was a lot of variety inherent in the material.

Of course, if I do get the project completed (this morning I was thinking it might take five years) and find a gallery venue for it, I will have to write an artist’s statement.  When I went to art school long ago, the concept of displaying three pages of single spaced text next to an artwork to explain the piece would have been considered laughable. Visual artists made visual art. Writing about art was the job of critics and art historians … even if they sometimes got things wrong.

This piece will need a statement to let viewers know that there is a wish inside every star, how long it took to make the piece (people always ask me that), and possibly a short bit about meditation labyrinths. No artspeak.

Apparently I am not the only person who finds that artist’s statements are frequently both pretentious and silly.

And, should you ever need to provide an artist’s statement to accompany your work, you might find this statement generator useful.