Arthouse Co-Op Mystery Project

A month or so back, I accepted the challenge to do the "Mystery Project" based on the description on the Arthouse Co-Op site that read "Create a token of inspiration using the tools in your kit — it could be a drawing, a zine, a sculpture, or a collage — then install it in a public place for a stranger to discover."

I was a little excited when the small bubble envelope containing the ingredients for my "Mystery Project" arrived. Inside the envelope, I found a nice little thank-you card, a Prismacolor marker in a color called "Cinnamon Toast," and a small card with the phrase "If tomorrow came yesterday" on it.

Yeah. I was less than thrilled with a brown marker and a prompt so tortured and twisted that my head hurt every time I tried to think about what to do for this project. For weeks, I picked up the envelope, pulled out the contents and felt my heart sink as I struggled to work out what I was supposed to do with that marker and those words. I planned an elaborate voting box with tokens for people encountering the art to select what they would do if, as the prompt suggested "tomorrow came yesterday." I imagined a social experiment in which people weighed the burdens of knowledge of the future and tried to decide how they would spend a day with that knowledge. All the while, I kept thinking that in that circumstance, I would do what I always do: Be present and content in the here and now.

After a whole lot of agonizing over how to build the contraption and where to install it, I scrapped the idea altogether and decided to do as the original challenge said and create a token of inspiration, a small item to remind people how important it it to be present, in the moment, here and now.


That's when I grabbed a tiny wooden birdhouse, covered it in strips of old Wall Street Journals (how perfect is that?), distressed the corners with a liberal touch of "Cinnamon Toast," and slipped a special message inside for people encountering the art to discover.


I took the finished piece to work & installed it between two bulletin boards that feature marketing materials for the various MBA programs offered at the business school where I work. 


Here are a few photos of the installation and people viewing the piece:

Sometimes I feel...

So, I don't know if it's because my birthday, the one I shared with my mother for 43 years, comes just two days after Mother's Day this year or if it's because she would have been 90 years old today, but I am having a very hard time having a happy birthday this year.

I don't mean that I'm not enjoying the fabulous weather and the few days off from work to which I've treated myself. I just mean that every moment I am reminded of her absence. Of the fact that I will never again hear her say, "Happy birthday, baby" after I say, "Happy birthday, Mom."

Never. That's a long time.

And she'll never see how well my life has turned out, how happy I am and what a wonderful husband I have. I think she would have loved his music. And him. She would have squeezed his knees at the dinner table and told him how handsome he is.

And it hurts to miss her just as much today as it did the day she died in 2003. I keep thinking it will get easier, but I don't know when.