magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

i spent pretty much the whole day being conflicted, in one way or another about my whole numbers project. first, in laying out the piece i did yesterday to be attached to fancier paper, it occurred to me that it would be neat if all the pieces i do are on the same size and format of paper. this wouldn't impact anything that i've done already too terribly much, but i have ideas for a number of pieces for which this would be a difficult limitation.

so i waffled on this for a while. my original intention was that it didn't matter what size, format, medium, or whatever the pieces were, as long as the number was in the somewhere. but, i think that this sort of limitation will be good in some ways, setting up rules can lead to creative ways of getting around them or at least of fitting within them. and so i had pretty much resigned myself to it by dinner time.

then, as i was actually getting ready to finish off piece 23, i thought: the ones i've done with people are really nice, maybe all one hundred should have figures in them. this was a more constricting limitation. a lot of my ideas couldn't really be fitted into this framework unless i just started arbitrarily adding a figure to everything i did. and i had already started a piece based on the weird, inlaid marble floor thing that i liked in siena.

i didn't like the way that piece was going anyway, but i kept working on it. or rather, working on the parts of it i did like, as sort of a study for another piece of just those. if i don't decide to do only figurative pieces that is.