#dailycards from 2017

#dailycards from 2016

#dailycards from 2015

Sometime in the early 00’s or maybe even before then, I took up the habit of drawing my own ‘business’ cards. I would make a drawing and then write my email address on the back. It was rewarding to be able to give someone something hand drawn instead of a printed card that was mass produced. I would usually draw a bunch of them when I had some time to do so, and would very often run out of them.

Around 2014 I decided that the solution to running out of cards would be to draw one card every day. From that point (it was June or July 12th?) I began to number them. Somehow I also decided that it would be interesting to post the cards on the wall in the bedroom for an entire year. Unfortunately this meant that for the entire year of 2015 I would probably not have any cards to give out. But that is another story.

In the beginning I had not applied any rules to the work. I used a variety of different colors for each card. The artworks themselves converged from the line drawing meditation to forms. Some were abstract but only by slight incidence. If I saw a face forming I would encourage it.

Almost each card was individually posted to my social media feeds. If I missed some days I would catch up with a photo of several cards.

In 2016 the project continued but with some changes. Cards would be posted to my social media feeds 7 at a time, beginning Friday and ending on Thursday. Each week was limited to a set of colors that I would choose at the start of each week.

More so than with the first year, I felt that I had found a better balance between color and line.

With the arrival of 2017 I added more structure by creating a pattern of black and grey backgrounds. This pattern was laid out on a long piece of grid paper to keep track of which background I would need to use on a particular day. For the foreground colors I obtained a set of color markers that I would use for the whole year, choosing two colors for each week, roughly based upon what colors I hadn’t used in the previous weeks. I also decided to not put the finished cards up in the bedroom anymore, so that I could only see the effect of the pattern emerging from behind the daily drawings at the exhibition in the following year. For the online postings I took a similar approach to the previous year where I only posted a weekly summary of the cards. But unlike the previous year where the layout was the same, I created a unique composition based on relationships that emerged between the cards.

In addition to this I collaborated on monthly summary videos of the cards with music composed for them by Boris Bell.


JUNI 2017 /// SchlagenSchaffenStreichen from ilan katin on Vimeo.

As of this writing the project continues in 2018 using laser cut wood pieces.

There is no underlying pattern. Background and foreground colors are selected with rolls of dice. The background colors are selected from a palate of four colors (red, yellow, blue and black) and the two foreground colors are pulled from a palate of twelve colors, with two colors chosen by the role of the dice weekly.

Weekly summaries are posted and the pieces are fitted together over the week to create a sculpture. Building upon last years monthly music summaries, I started to compose and produce my own music for them.