Days

What if we knew the day we will die?
What if we could count how many days we have left?

Would we live each day more fully?

When I document my days with journal keeping, I am counting the days UP.
How can I make an artwork that counts the days down?

Let's say...300 days.
What does one do with that finite knowledge?
Maybe one thing would be to really think about what one wants to leave behind.

A clean house.
A body of good work..
Gifts for each child and grandchild.


NOTE: all images in this post are of Hannah Claus' installation Our Minds Are One 2014, on now in the exhibition Reading The Talk at the beautiful Maclaren Art Centre in Barrie Ontario.  The artwork refers to the Dish with One Spoon Treaty negotiated in the 17th and 18th centuries so as to ensure the shared sustenance of the 'bowl' or land between the Anishinaabeg and the Haudenosaunee peoples.
The text in this post is from my own journal.

star chart

Star chart  painted with mineral pigments on tanned elk leather
The many tiny stars in the middle represent the milky way
A sacred object of the Skidi Pawnee tribe who lived in what is now Nebraska
Buffalo hunters
village livers
cosmic believers

It entered the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago in 1906
it was already between 100 and 300 years old
the north star is the largest cross

Sources:  here  and here  with thanks.