Upon the realization that it’s been literally years since I last updated this fine site, I figured it was time to hunker down and write up all the news about the project.
The major update—you will not need SASEs to get a flower for the foreseeable future! This isn’t a permanent arrangement, but it should last for some time. I was given some money by a nonprofit that rather liked my project and wanted a couple hundred flowers to give to their patrons. I couldn’t bear to take the money as a payment—the whole point of the project is giving art away for free—but I decided what I could do is receive it as a donation, and spend the money on supplies, envelopes, and postage so I could mail flowers out directly to people. I’ve set up an email address—free@10kflowers.com—and all you have to do is send your mailing address and I’ll pop one in the mail for you. When I go through the money, I might do a GoFundMe or a Kickstarter to replenish, but that’s a ways down the road.
I’ve been quite productive at making them, but not so effective at giving them away.
Really, really bad at that part.
I decided to slow down production so that I draw one new flower for every two flowers I give away. (I’ve decided that having flowers fall out of my back pocket, dragging a perfectly good catbook with them, counts as giving them away to the universe. I’ve added a new category in my summary page to acknowledge them.) This meant that I spent long stretches with no drawings at all, unfortunately. I’ve now given away (or lost) enough to last me a few sessions, so I’ll be updating Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Mastodon accordingly. Please spread the word so I can draw more of them!
It took longer than I care to contemplate to bundle up all those flowers into the nice, neat stacks you see above. See that little sticky note poking out of one stack with “+100” written on it? Yeah, about that…
On the 12th of July, 2016, I drew two flowers, as I usually do, and I jumped the numbering back by 100 when I finished up the second one. This went unnoticed for SIX YEARS. Every flower I have drawn since then has been off by 100.
But I did finally count through everything carefully and put things in order and now the only thing left is to roll up my sleeves, grab a pen, and start renumbering. This may take a while. Then again, so does drawing ten thousand flowers.
I think that covers everything for now. I’ll try to me more prompt about updating this place. In the meantime, do you have a flower? Do you want one? Just go here for all the deets and one of these lovelies could be yours!
I’m not sure when I did, exactly. All I do know is that it came in tremendously handy because the period of my life between moving out of my parents’ house for the first time and buying property of my own was marked by a rather unstable string of mailing addresses, often due to unreasonable increases in rent that sent my roommate and me packing for better places. Things like postcards from bands and museum newsletters got to me uninterrupted and I had an address I could use to avoid being stalked.
The business that hosted my box closed and I was moved to somewhere a little further away, but still within my range. Then I bought a condominium in lovely Sandy Springs and it was a bit of a drive to get there. I held on to it, because I harbored the belief that I’d be moving back intown in a few years once I had enough money to move out of my starter home into something grander.
The Great Recession hit. I waited a little longer. In the meantime, I started directing requests for The Ten Thousand Flower Project there.
I lost two jobs in a row to mental illness. I waited a little longer still.
I discovered that there was a purveyor of mailboxes in the same large complex that I buy my groceries. That clinched it.
This is a rather long ramble to get to this point–the new address for The Ten Thousand Flowers Project is:
The Ten Thousand Flowers Project 227 Sandy Springs Place Suite D, #474 Sandy Springs, GA 30328
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but I am a chronic procrastinator and the calcified layers of habit that had formed around not posting here made it hard to break through to actually posting here. But right now I’m convalescing from a car wreck (no bones broken but lots of bruising) and the pain has diminished enough that I can focus on writing for long enough stretches to bash out a blog post.
So. Of the five classical senses, drawing flowers only really engages sight and touch. (It would be pretty weird if it engaged the sense of smell.) Hearing gets left out unless I focus on the scritch scritch scritch of the pen on the index card. Because of this, I like to have something going on to engage that part of my brain. For a while, I was watching shorts and movies by RiffTrax, because I was familiar enough with them that I didn’t have to glance up at the screen very much. (Many of the shorts are just riffers versus authoritative disembodied voices anyway.) More recently, I’ve started using podcasts. One of the first ones I glommed on to was Bill Corbett’s Funhouse, hosted by Bill Corbett of RiffTrax fame. In it, Bill, his co-host Brandi Brown, and at least one other panelist discuss a topic, plug books and movies and other media that they liked and offer advice to listeners who write in.
So I wrote in.
This is what I sent to the designated email address:
Dear Funhouse Crew—
I’ve gotten myself into a mess, and I need some advice on how to get out of it.
Back in 2011, I embarked on something I called The Ten Thousand Flowers Project. The object is to draw ten thousand flowers on index cards and give them away to people. (I can’t really draw, but I don’t let that stop me.) I am quite convinced that I was hypomanic at the time, because I was churning the things out at the rate of ten a day, and figured I’d be done inside of three years. Then the Wheel of Bipolar took another rotation and plunged me into depression, and I was lucky to get one flower a day done.
Since then, I’ve been diagnosed (bipolar II, the less exciting sequel to bipolar I) and treated and have the worst of my symptoms under control. I have been making flowers at the steady rate of two a day, so I should be done in about a decade. (I’ve even started listening to the podcast while I draw.)
And here we get to the mess. I’ve been great about drawing, but absolute SHIT on the “giving them away” part. When I first started the project, hypomania convinced me that all I needed to do was set up a website, set up an address to send a SASE to, put up my flowers on Twitter (@wonderbink) and then sooner or later it would all go viral and I wouldn’t be lacking for interested people. I can tell by the way you’re shaking your heads right now that you understand why this particular strategy did not work. I started working up the nerve to hand out the flowers at various events where creative people gather. (I actually gave a flower to Bill at DragonCon, though I doubt he remembers.) That’s made a significant dent in the backlog, but I currently have over TWO THOUSAND FLOWERS in untidy stacks by my bookcase, waiting to be distributed. And the things are still stacking up at the rate of two a day.
I’m in a bit of a Sorcerer’s Apprentice situation here. Any suggestions on how to get out of it, short of quitting altogether?
Thank you kindly,
Sheila the Wonderbink
I didn’t expect much. I kept drawing flowers and kept listening to the podcast and then along came Episode 14 – Pea Sea, wherein they discussed political correctness, top ten movie lists, and a kid’s anime starring a polar bear who runs a cafe. After an interlude by Joseph Scrimshaw about Mary Poppins Returns, they got to the advice portion of the program, wherein they discussed a letter sent in by someone calling herself Sheila the Wonderbink.
The first one to speak up was the guest star of the evening, Bryan Miller. He urged me to see the project through to completion and suggested I put a stamp or a sticker on the back so people would know the significance of the flower. I thought these were both grand ideas and vowed to implement them.
Then Brandi stepped up to the mike and gave a very different take. She urged me to forget sunk costs and give up the project entirely. Bill seconded the motion.
This was my visceral reaction:
NO!
Nonononononononono!
WON’T!
Nuh-uh. Nope. Not.
Upon a second listen, once the outrage had died down, I noted that Bill and Brandi were urging me to quit if it was making me so miserable. Which it isn’t, really. If it was, my reaction would have been enormous relief rather than digging my heels in. So even if I didn’t take the advice, it was still good advice because it forced me to think about how important this project is to me.
As for the advice I did take, I used the mailing labels I already had on hand and found that they were a perfect size for putting on the back of a 3″ x 5″ index card.
I go through a lot of them.
The sticker reads as follows: This flower is part of The Ten Thousand Flowers Project. Thank you for your participation! www.wonderbink.com/10kflowers
So, has my problem been solved? Nope. I still have over three thousand flowers drawn and less than a thousand given away. I have gotten a couple of SASEs in my mailbox from a gent who also listens to the podcast, though, so that’s something. And right now there’s not much I can do in the handing out of flowers, given I’m using a cane to get around and I really need both hands free to give away stuff with.
But in the meantime, I can still draw. Think I may do that now, actually.
Naked City is something of a cross between an open mic and a game show. People sign up to perform, they are called up at random and they are given five minutes to do whatever. If they go over five minutes, they must spin The Wheel of Consequences, which can result in anything from free drinks (either for you on the hosts’ tab or for the hosts on your tab) to bags of booze and dollar store trinkets to being recruited for a short piece of performance art.
The view from my seat
Each show has a theme. The theme for this month was Courage. I could have told a tale or two about the times I’ve shown courage in my life but instead I decided to do something courageous as a demonstration. Instead of a written piece, I would do a performance of sorts–I would hand out my flowers to anyone who wanted them.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, I’ve been reasonably good at producing flowers but not so good as distributing them. Approaching people to offer them free art feels a little too much like salesmanship and I am not a salesman. But I worked up my nerve to sign up and when my number was called I went up and explained what I was about to do. I invited people to come up to the podium and receive a flower.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. Or, rather, I had expectations, but they were contradictory ones. My pessimistic self claimed that no one would come up at all. My cautious self suggested a few would. My optimistic self predicted that lots of people would come and that they would be happy to receive the flowers.
My optimistic self won the bet. People were on their feet, lining up in what one person called a more fun version of communion. They were delighted and I was too. It happened so swiftly that I didn’t even have to spin the Wheel of Consequences either.
As per usual when I face down a fear, I felt a surge of bliss as a result. People thanked me for the flowers and congratulated me for my display of courage.
I still have hundreds to give away. I’ll just have to keep being courageous.
I think if this peculiar project has taught me anything, it’s that I never would have made it as a professional artist. Because I can’t even give the stuff away.
Exhibit A
In terms of production, I’m still slightly behind the rate of a flower a day that I’d originally set for myself, because the Head Gremlins managed to stop me for long stretches and I haven’t quite caught up yet. It probably doesn’t help that the number of Flowers As Yet To Be Given Away has stacked up to the point that a hundred people could suddenly hit me up for flowers and I’d still have another few hundred to spare.
I’m still figuring out the best way to give these things away in a way that doesn’t obliterate the message I’m hoping to send with this. I don’t want to market or monetize these flowers and I want to make sure they are led to places where they will be kept, rather than discarded like advertising flyers and other such free things we take for granted. (I found a few on the floor when I gave away a stack of them on New Year’s Eve and it absolutely broke my heart to see them there. I picked them up, dusted them off and later found them better homes.)
Until I catch the viral infection of Warhol Syndrome and get that precious fifteen minutes to spread the word in, I guess all I can do it what I’ve been doing so far in my tortoise steps to that finish line marked by the ten thousandth flower.
I finished Flower 680 today. I still have a ways to go.
Today, according to my calculations, is the one year anniversary of the day I embarked on this mad project. The gremlins in the head did win enough battles, so that my current rate is a little less than a flower a day, but I hope to rectify that soon.
It was easy enough to keep track of things when I was mailing them out in the order I received requests, but when I starting going out into the world and handing them out personally it became a little harder to calculate what I’d given away and what I still had to give. Fortunately, I number and date each flower as I draw it, so it’s not impossible, it just takes a little more work.
I don’t keep track of what happens to each flower by number, other than this one particular exception, because Flower #71 has a different story than any other flower I’ve drawn so far.
When I heard about Free Art Friday in Atlanta, my first thought was “That sounds like fun! I want to play, too!” The only problem was, markers and index cards aren’t exactly the most weatherproof of mediums. My attempted solution was to paint up an empty Coke bottle, place the flower inside, cork it and wrap the cork in foil in the hopes of protecting the delicate medium from the elements.
I hope that someone gets my . . .
There turned out to be two fundamental problems with this bit of presumed cleverness. One was that it didn’t work. The other was that it didn’t work.
It didn’t work because I placed it somewhere where nobody was really looking. And it didn’t work because despite my best efforts to clean out the bottle and seal it properly, a bit of lingering moisture got in and when I finally extracted the flower from the bottle the results were not pretty.
This? Not pretty.
I held on to it for a few months, trying to figure out what to do with it. I felt awful about the idea of giving it to someone in the state it was in and even withdrew it from circulation until I came to a decision.
This was my solution:
...one day this will all be ashes...
I shot video for as long as I could manage before I needed two hands to light another match. By the end of it, I was reduced to spiking it on a hatpin gripped with pliers and holding it over a candle like a toasted marshmallow.
It felt surprisingly liberating. Now I can let my flowers go and know that whatever happens to them, it can’t be any worse than what I’ve already done to Flower #71.
I’ve done a bit of tweakery to simplify the link to the Ten Thousand Flowers project and I decided to go ahead and register the domain 10KFlowers.com to point here. (I’m still keeping Wonderbink.com, though, because who else would want it?)
It’s been not quite a year since I embarked on this crazy idea and it’s a bit disheartening to realize that my current flower count is rather less than it would have been if I’d drawn a flower a day from the start. There were long stretches of time where the gremlins won out and nothing got drawn. I’m still hoping to make up for that.
Still, I am further ahead than if I’d done nothing at all. My little tracking system is still intact, and showing signs of some kind of progress.
...a progression of tiny dots...
And flowers 191 through 200 do look a touch better than flowers 1-10.
(and they were all drawn on the same day, too)
Now that it’s warm enough to venture outside, there are more art festival type events where I can plant myself and try to find more people willing to take these flowers off my hands and give them proper homes. I’m also glad to mail them to anybody who sends me a SASE. And if you’re reading this and you’re one of the lovely people who already has one, thank you from the bottom of my fractured heart.
It’s been roughly six months since I got it in my head that I would draw and give away ten thousand flowers and I think I’ve gotten a grand total of six envelopes mailed in my direction. When I infiltrated Flux 2011 and set myself up at a table, I was able to draw and give away nearly fifty flowers there. But now the flowers are starting to accumulate in my art supply bag and I haven’t been able to find a suitable venue to distribute them by hand again.
Knowing that the Internet thrives on laziness, I decided to make it just a step easier for someone to acquire a flower from me. On the Ten Thousand Flowers page you will now find a PayPal donate button, where you can send me the money to reimburse me for postage and envelopes and provide me an address to mail a flower to. For simplicity’s sake, round it up to $1.00 for a flower mailed inside the United States and $2.00 for a flower mailed internationally. If you want to round it up even higher, be my guest–any excess funds can go towards more index cards, internet hosting fees and maybe a cup of tea to sip as I draw.
So if you’ve wanted one of these scribbly flowers but you’ve been procrastinating getting it because you pay all your bills online and haven’t used a stamped envelope for anything in ages, I’ve now cleared a path for you to acquire one. Enjoy!
So for my 2012, I have decided instead of the usual resolutions about exercise and getting organized, I’m going to take on three self-imposed challenges. The one we’ll discuss here pertains, as you might have guessed, to my Ten Thousand Flowers project.
I knew when I set myself the task of drawing ten thousand of these things, that I’d come up against the usual resistance and procrastination. The incentive of having people ask me for them has been a useful nudge but the requests have dropped off and I’ve been terrible about letting the world know that I have flowers to give away. So as a way to poke me into keeping the momentum going instead of waiting until I’ve run out before making new ones, I’ve placed this New Year’s resolution on my shoulders–each day I must do at least one flower. I can do more, and probably will, but I’m setting myself a minimum of one flower a day. To keep myself honest, I will also photograph the first flower of the day and put it up on Twitter with the hashtag #10KFlowers.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the first flower of 2012.
I can’t say with absolute certainty that I will hold to this resolution perfectly in the coming year. But having been offered Neil Gaiman’s benediction to make mistakes this year, it’s worth a try.
I find that when I give myself a ridiculous but quantifiable task such as, say, drafting a 50,000 word novel in thirty days, it helps to have some kind of visual aid that allows me to keep track of how far I’ve come and how far I have to go. By breaking it down into small enough steps, I can also use it to prod the spot in my brain that takes pleasure in a sense of progress.
I came up with a tracking sheet for NaNoWriMo that allows me to cross off a box for every twenty-five words I add to my wordcount. I batted around the idea of putting together a sheet that would allow me to mark each one of my ten thousand flowers, but I calculated that it would require a 100 by 100 grid, and I wasn’t sure how to put one together without driving myself mad. I wanted it to be small enough that I could paste it on the back of the bit of cardboard I carry to bear down on when I take my art supplies with me and go to make flowers outside of my home. One millimeter squares would do the job, but how on earth to draw them?
Answer: find a website that can calculate and draw a grid to just such a set of specifications. Print out the resultant PDF. Fill in the squares completed so far. Victory!
66 down, 9,934 to go . . .
Now each time I complete a flower, I add a single dot to the grid and over time I hope to fill the thing completely with color.
And, yes, you’re right. I do have a lot of work left to be done.
