It's easy to call this number forty, but one of the cardinal rules of the Quatrain Project is that the use of cardinal numbers are only part of any title. So, in the search for an appropriate linguistic identifier, I found that the ordinal number fortieth, in Webster's Dictionary, has this exquisite Latin word starting with letter Q, that translates precisely to mean fortieth: Quadragesimus. So what better way is there to mark this quantitative milestone of the Quatrain Project's life than with a bit of literary and visual redundancy?
I am deeply grateful to Pearl Street Studios in Ypsilanti, Michigan, for hosting the Quatrain Project at the October 2017 First Friday Event. I was asked produce a quatrain on the spot that evening by my host, and I have to admit it that it was rather intimidating to fathom the possibility of doing so. In the trinity of art production, which I'll loosely identify as Creation, Community, & Presentation, one doesn't typically think about creating new work during their opening [presentation phase] because they are two completely different creative processes and mindsets, let alone the idea of having the right tools on hand. Nonetheless, I couldn't resist the challenge, so here's the result I produced while in the presentation mindset, and twisting the creative process into reverse flow.
For me, this quatrain turns out being a major sign post in the long journey of this project. It's numerical value is perfectly suited to offer connection to the project's identity, it's riven with multiplicity, it reveals process and viewer interaction, and summarizes the idea that it takes thousands of images to produce the few that we end up showing the world.
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