Now page (for September 2026)

Updated September 19, 2026, from Glen Ellyn, IL USA

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For the past month, I revamped spudart.org. I added a new art section and “try this” section.
The art section has four art projects (eventually it’ll have 80). And it will have hundreds of artworks. Right now it has 59 artworks in the gallery.
The “Try this” section has five projects. I’d like to have one project for each month.

Here’s a screenshot of part of the gallery:

Packing lunch for the kids and coming up with tiny 19-, 21-character notes for my second grader.
Thinking about what I want our kids’ school district to value, and how those values actually show up in an elementary school.

Continuing to make art out of ordinary, easily overlooked things.
Working on my Letters on Foil project. My latest one was made at Manor Woods.
Thinking about a new project involving Fast Food Origami, using paper fast-food bags as the material.
Had an idea called #traceyourfood: tracing the outline of everything I eat over the course of one day.
Looking more closely at my Pressed Leaves with Stories project, including the difference between a real leaf and a photograph or printed image of a leaf.
Digging into Robert Rauschenberg and thinking about why his work appeals to me.

Continuing through Judges. I’ve been particularly interested in the Hebrew words and literary wordplay in Judges 6–9.
Reading and thinking about art theory, especially artists who blur the boundaries between ordinary objects, documentation, and art.

Looking at the way MLB players use Bible verses in their Instagram bios.
Digging into Hunter Dozier’s use of a Bible verse and what it means in the context of his story.
Continuing work on 57hits and thinking about baseball cards, scorecards, and the strange ways baseball becomes part of people’s identities.

Continuing to blog at spudart.org, as I approach the blog’s 25th anniversary.
Added an architecture tag to spudart.org and discovered that I already have 75 architecture posts.
Built a small Lightroom Classic plugin to copy filenames from selected photos and movies.
Thinking about how to make the web feel a little more human and interactive again.

What makes an ordinary object become an artwork?
Why does documenting an action sometimes become more interesting than the thing itself?
The difference between a real thing, a photograph of the thing, and an image that represents the thing.
How small, almost pointless actions can become meaningful simply because we pay attention to them.

Looking at Synectics Trigger Questions and thinking about ways to use them to generate unexpected connections.
Thinking about the old 43things.com and what a contemporary version of that kind of community might look like.
Collecting little ideas that might become projects later rather than immediately turning every idea into a finished project.