Poster Night - Our 10 Year Celebration!

My Poster - not this blurry in real life...

Last night was the 10th anniversary of our Poster Night. You can read about last year's poster night here.

Since 2001 my same 4 friends have been meeting at my house sometime in January to make our yearly poster of the year.

Some make their poster with goals in mind, some just choose images from magazines that appeal to them, some do a little of both.  There is no wrong way to make a poster.

Basically, my friends arrive at 4ish (we started early thinking we'd end earlier, but we didn't end until midnight again.)  We have food and drink, we talk.  In celebration of our 10th year we opened a bottle of special champagne I had been saving and made a toast.

Then we sat down and cut images out of magazines for the next couple hours.  We talk as we do this, then sometimes it will get very quiet.  Once we have a nice pile of interesting images we each like, we grab a large piece of poster board and a glue stick and get to work.

I would say that of everyone's posters, mine is usually the one I like least.  It's weird to say since it's mine, based on my favorite images, but usually when we're done, I look at everyone's and they seem to make more sense and have more stronger themes and ideas in it.  I always like what others do with their images. It's kind of similar to liking someone's drawing better than your own.

The good news is that I usually wake up the next day and like my poster.

Once all the posters are done (around midnight apparently, no matter when start) we go around the table and talk about them.

I am usually clueless about mine.  Here's some things I said last night--

I have a fisherman in it because I appreciate hard work and well, I've always romanticized fishermen and their nets (no that is not innuendo).

I have a pretty file cabinet that looks like a piano to represent staying organized.

There's a woman sitting atop a triangle hedge and in the center, an elephant in front of a hazy Eiffel Tower.  I'm not sure why, but I like that it looks as if the elephant is smiling.

I like how the girl standing on "happiness" is looking inward instead of outward.

I have a bra made of a map, maybe that means travel.  Or support the world.

I have two people dancing the tango because once I am organized and the work is done, I can play.

~

Last year my theme was "Live on Less," this year, there is a definite focus on organization "Organize Your Life."  There's also a focus on working hard and oddly enough, butterflies.  

My writing always plays a role in it, but the last two years, I think it's been a little less for me.  I am not writing as much as I usually do and feel to be in a sort of transition, that "something's-a-brewing" feeling.  There are paintings and drawings of three people on my poster this year-- Albert Einstein, Jane Austen and Frida Kahlo.

Some people call these vision boards, but I just call mine my yearly poster.  I will spend the rest of the year looking at it more closely (I keep it in my writing studio) and seeing if I can draw any connections from my real life into my paper life.








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