I've been working on the One Thousand Thousand project for a long, long time. In years past a big part of the process involved working with other artists to sort of push one another to do things they'd not normally/immediately consider and having other styles and techniques kind of imposed on you definitely facilitates growth. So it's been a collaborative effort for sure. I've roped a lot of people in to participate in the project and if you know me then chances are I've stuck a paintbrush in your hands and said to have a go at it.

There have been plenty of instances where other artists took to the project and produced a series of pieces on their own and the cool part of it is to see how it takes on a life of its own with them. One recent example is when I last visited my Very Good Friend Kim in St. Louis. I'd been hounding her for years to consider doing some work for the project. She was gracious enough years ago to have worked on a piece I did for my 52 Weeks project [She did Week 36. ] and I hoped to have her do the same for the One Thousand Thousand project.

I did this little set of 8 pieces and I went back and forth between loving it and hating it and once I got it to a place that was not hating it I stopped. I've learned to quit while I'm ahead and am even able to do that every once in a while and rather than risk ruining the entire set I paused to figure out what was missing. 

There are a variety of ways to do photo image transfers and the way I know how is to print off some images onto acetate using an inkjet printer. From there you smear a little alcohol-based hand sanitizer onto the surface you want to transfer to and then flip the printed acetate over onto the alcohol gel you smeared on and then press down. The hand sanitizer gel lifts off the ink and it evaporates pretty quickly and the results are this ghosted image of the original. 

I don't like going for a perfect transfer and prefer that there is some hazy looking residue of an image left behind. [As opposed to some crisp or clean image.] It helps to add something to the pieces that are not quite completed and in this case it had the exact result I was hoping for. 

I used some vintage images of the Northern Lights and some meteor showers and volcanoes erupting and one from an old photo-postcard of the Golden Gate bridge. Scans of the finished pieces as well as some overview shots plus a few of the source images are just below. 

[Not sure what I'm doing wrong that the scans just never show the neon pink like they should. But, trust me on this one, these are incredible looking in person and are some of my new favorites.]