Maybe I’m just over-thinking this whole 8x8x8 thing. Ever since I agreed to participate I’ve been rolling some ideas around in my head. A lot of those have gone by the wayside but I’ve actually enjoyed the thinking through process even though I haven’t made any real tangible progress as of yet.
My first thought was to make one piece that would be divided into 8 - 8”x8” squares that would then hang about a half inch apart. I still like that idea because then I only need to focus on one larger piece rather than eight small individual ideas. Maybe I’m just lazy but somehow that appealed to me. But then I started pondering other possibilities.
Perhaps I’m zeroing in too much on the whole 8x8x8 thing but it is intriguing and in doing so I’ve discovered some interesting things and had some happy coincidences. One thing I’ve discovered is that in the Greek language the word for Jesus, “Iesous”, has a numeric value of 888. (The Greek language didn’t have symbols for numbers – they just assigned a numeric value to each letter to convey numbers.) As a believer in Jesus Christ and a participant in this 8x8x8 project that was an exciting discovery. I just haven’t been getting any inspiration as to how to incorporate that knowledge into any art in any meaningful way. Also, the name of Jesus and the number 8 in the Bible are associated with new beginnings so that was fun to ponder and a few things came to mind as I thought about possibilities such as: birth, a seed, spring, resurrection, marriage, etc. I thought for a while I might really head that direction. Still might. Still deciding.
But then I started thinking more in a graphic design direction that would incorporate the various ways to express, “8” – numeric, letters/words, roman numerals, etc., all arranged in some interesting (hopefully), almost abstract design that I would then produce in eight different mediums. I still like that idea and might go that direction. Maybe not though because it seems more labor intensive and stressful since I’d be shooting somewhat for a cohesiveness and visual similarity between all the pieces.
I also had fun thinking about different things in this world associated with the number eight such as crazy eights, an eighth note, being behind the eight ball, an octopus, a spider, etc. I also began to be quite aware of any eights that I would see when out and about and had a happy coincident when we visited Portales a few weeks ago to see our youngest daughter do her cheerleading thing for an ENMU basketball game. While waiting for the game to begin, I glanced up at the scoreboard and there on either side, advertising for Super 8 Motel and a local TV station, were “8’s”. The goal that evening became catching the time clock at 8:08. Finally in the fourth quarter I finally succeeded but had accidentally left the camera in video mode after filming the cheerleader’s halftime routine and consequently I have a low resolution and unusable still photo from the video. It made for an amusing evening anyway. Oh well, thankfully there’s Photoshop!
Another thing I played with for a couple of days was how three eights (888) can be made to look like animals or people and so of course my next thought was more about 3’s of a kind rather than 8’s. Three blind mice was one of the brief sketches I made but I gave up on that idea when I happened to see a piece somewhere (on a blog or in a magazine) that had three blind mice in it. I don’t want to steal ideas (or even look like I’m stealing ideas) from other artists so I never got back to thinking that one through.
My latest idea of doing something with my eight favorite sayings developed because of an uncompleted Valentine’s Day project. I had cut a square into a paper-maché heart and thought about how I could have stuff springing out of it. That made me think of one of my favorite sayings, “You’ll know what you’re full of by what spills out when you get bumped.” I don’t think this is my favorite idea for the 8x8x8 project but I’ll probably use it later for something.
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