The day I started my project, we lost natural gas here in Taos, and it was declared "a state of emergency."  I was without hot running water, and the only way to cook was on my wood burning stove or in a little toaster oven.  Still, I felt cozy and content cutting up an old magazine next to the fire.  I even felt inspired by the strangeness of what was occuring and how people were kind of freaking out.  It can feel good to create when there is something lacking.  Its as if one brings balance to the other, at least in the realm of my psyche.  I decided to try to make a three dimensional shape. I folded a series of squares of black and white magazine paper into the same shape and then glued them all together. 

Here is what I ended up with:

Day 2 of the project, Taos was still dealing with its emergency.  I was staying for the weekend at a friends house who has propane.  So in the evening after a hot shower, I sat down with a pile of boxes I had saved from various food products.  I had several Annie's Mac and Cheese boxes, a box from Drumstick ice cream cones, and a cracker box.  I wanted to make another sculptural object, but one that could shift and be played around with, so I created a bunch of round circles with slots in them so that they could slide onto each other in an endless variety of ways.  My daughter and her friend had a lot of fun helping me put this together.

For day 3, I decided to try again the black and white magazine origami because I had so much fun with it the first time, and had found another really cool design.  I ended up liking the end result of this day's attempt much more than what I made the first time around.  So already on day 3, I am seeing how an idea can evolve and become more interesting when it is revisited again.  Something that I had hoped for in taking on this yearly project was the evolution of ideas and my creative process.  I would like to display these eventually on some sort of string, so they can look like they are hanging on a vine, but here they are as scattered individuals: