The Wall Project is one of my many goofy ideas, but unlike most of my goofy ideas, this one has actually grown in to a cool, collaborative piece of art.

I’ve always enjoyed doodling, and I think a lot of my visual art is really a slightly grown-up form of doodles. One day during an idle office hour (redundant?), I began doodling on some 3×5.5-inch scraps of paper that I had leftover from printing scores for a saxophone piece the night before. I kind of liked my doodle, but I was running out of room on the small card. So, I grabbed another card and continued my doodle onto it. I ended up liking my doodle so much that I decided to tape it to the wall of the office that I shared with 9 other music theory teaching assistants. Later that week, a couple of other TAs grabbed cards and continued my doodles in interesting and unexpected ways. I thought, “How cool is that? We should do another one.” So, with the same scraps of paper and armed with some colored pencils, I started a collaborative art piece that I now call either the Wall Project (as it was originally sticking cards to the wall here at the Guidonian Hand Executive Office Suite) or the Big Board (as it is now sticking cards to a big piece of foam board).

The piece has grown beyond what I ever expected it could, and the board only has room for about ten or so more cards (as of this writing). People that have contributed are mostly composers and musicians, and none of us have any formal training in art. They are friends and acquaintances from all over the place that have just so happened to be in the same room as the big board and were in a creative mood. I like to take the board to parties and invite people to add to it. Some of my friends like it so much that they have added four, five, or even six cards to the project.

I’m starting a series about the Wall Project here on the blog. Each post will include a photo of an individual card, and then that card with the other cards that were on the board when it was added (moving more-or-less in chronological order).

Here’s the inaugural card of the Wall Project, created by yours truly:

Wall Project: Card 1 (David MacDonald)

It’s intended to be rather non-descript. I didn’t want to impose myself on the work at the beginning, but I needed to start with something. I tried to start a trend of initialling and dating each card (bottom right conrner), but that never really caught on. Stay RSS-fed for the next installment, and keep your eye on that blue squiggly thing. I think of it as a river viewed from above, but I wonder what other artists are going to do with that…