Created as part of an annual “100 Day Project” for the first 100 days of 2024, each butter wrapper features an acrylic abstract family portrait: a creative exercise I do when I’m overthinking things, feeling blocked, or burnt out - which, is unfortunately, exactly how I was feeling at the start of 2024 despite my desire to embark on another 100 Day Project.
Originally from Kentucky, embracing butter was (is?) something of an obligation. It’s also something my Grandmother had on slice of white sandwich bread with every single meal throughout my childhood. Given the origins of this 100daypractice of mine (the first project having begun in the early postpartum days after having my second child in an effort to help ward off the postpartum depression experienced after having my first child), I am once again connecting the dots between my past, memories of my own childhood with my present day-to-day experience of motherhood and childhood as my own children experience it.
Aside from my personal love of butter, what else screams domesticity as loudly as the humble stick of butter does? It felt like the perfect backdrop for a family portrait, albeit, an abstract and, depending on the mood, colorful one. These abstract portraits capture the days when their little bodies are wedged in between my own and their father’s, days feeling as though they outweigh us, days we are leaning or piled on top of each other, or floating around in our own worlds.