52 Weeks
52 Weeks is the collaborative effort of artists Jason Andrew McHenry and Christopher J. Dyer. The project was a yearlong visual diary and journal presented in weekly increments. Each artist presented fifty-two boxes, for a total of one-hundred and four separate pieces.
The visual entries center around pre-existing, 4×6×2 inch shadow boxes. Found objects, ephemera, and original art were collected and manipulated over the week’s time to create distinct and personal assemblages.
Accompanying these visual entries are written journals specific to each artist. The written journals predominantly contain explicit documentation of the box contents, but also include writings and notations of a more introspective and creative nature.
The friendship between 52 Weeks creators spans nearly two decades, and their collaborative efforts have produced a large catalog of artistic work. They notably served as co-founders of the critically acclaimed Holy Mackerel Press which published limited edition art-bound volumes by poets such as Thom Peters , Allen Ginsberg and Dr. Martin McGovern. They have been included in numerous gallery showings in Saint Louis, Denver, Los Angeles and Seattle.
The 52 Weeks project went on a small gallery tour through the Pacific Northwest and was featured at Bumbershoot in Seattle where it garnered praise and was optioned by a local gallery. After the final opening every piece was sold and the artists both left town. [They have not seen one another since then.]
An introduction to this beast is damn near impossible. Upon inception, the project appeared simple – document a year of your life. Fine, no problem. The 52 weeks ahead of me seemed worthy to capture for prosperity. Having relocated to a new town with a woman I loved and an impending marriage held the promise of something worth documenting for prosterity. Then, as it does, the comedy of the human condition unraveled at the seam revealing the florescent lit horrors that haunt us all at some point – betrayal, death, loss, madness. An embarrassing and complicated display to be sure, but something we can all attest to. So there it iis. Caught in a bet I was never meant to win anyway, I have been forced into collecting elements from what may be the most difficult and illegible year of my life. For reasons of simple self-preservation, the text you are about to read has been edited quite considerably. I would like to offer some apologies, but can not. [If you would allow me access to the awkward, honest details of your personal life for a year, I would gladly give you mine.]
52 Photos
Nothing to say about this one really. I did one box a week for a year. Using found objects, original art, ephemera, et cetera. A visual diary, of sorts, and I kept a seriously detailed journal with a complete inventory of all of the objects and items in the boxes along with some pretty exposed written journal entries for every single week. The following images are of the final/finished pieces and there are three different file sizes [S, M, and L] in case they were too big or too small. And the text entries on these pages have been, I admit, somewhat censored. I made sure to just write everything in the paper journals for this project regardless of how embarrassing or raw or crazed any of it would sound. But now that it's over I don't want anyone to get mad at me or, worse still, hurt. This project was a very hard thing for me to do. I hope that you like it.
53 Photos