My original plan was to construct an encaustic collage commenting on wax tablets, ear candling, beeswax, etc. As I began to to prepare my wax-and-damar medium, I realized my canvases had gone missing — I had no solid surface.

As I paced around my apartment seeking a new plan (with a tabula rasa sans the tabula, so to speak), every object became a potential surface on which to construct. I scribbled a note about shedding and collecting culture on my lint roller. I re-discovered a college relic: a napkin detailing ideas for a conceptual art piece a friend and I wanted to install in our dining hall. I looked down and thought about my feet. I often think about feet, having composed recent papers featuring footless birds of paradise and poultry with prosthetic feet.

I started brainstorming on my feet.

Evidently I wanted to consider autology and prosody (“molossus” is cut off at the bottom there), toe jam (where I jammed my toe), anatomy (entertaining the fact that humans have cuneiform bones in each foot), and Achilles (of course). On the other side of my foot, I’d drawn waves, considered splinters, discussed bound feet and grounds covered.

I love writing on skin (and tangentially, have always been intrigued by the terrific tradition of anthropodermic bibliopegy, books bound in human skin). Between discussing compositions on ballet slippers to those on vellum in class, my living-foot-skin project seemed feasible.

While my right foot was used for notes (pictured), I saved my left for the final product. Things got messy once I realized I was not flexible enough to write legibly on the entirety of both my feet. I gave up and found a rubber band someone flung at me yesterday, and scribbled a lesson to myself:

Feeling the rubber band too uncharacteristically minimalistic and focused, I was determined to excavate more odds and ends. I found a dented tin and broken bits and made a little box of sad excuses, and finally felt I had completed the project to a satisfactory end: