Top Nine

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“It’s ok if you didn’t even take nine photos in 2020. Getting out of bed was good enough.”
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TL;DR: Top Nine grids made me super anxious in 2020 so I made this.
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I shot and edited this project over the first two weeks of 2021 after watching endless Top Nine grids flood my Instagram feed. 2020 was a really tough year for many reasons, and seeing the success of other artists measured by the amount of work they produced or likes they received made me feel small, like I’m not good enough to share the same space, or I could have/should have done more with my time. Before this project, I hadn’t felt a creative spark or been in my studio for weeks, and I honestly started to wonder if I was just done being an artist.
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Truth is, I’m proud of myself for what I did create last year, but even more so for acknowledging when I needed rest, being kind to myself when I felt like a pile of shit, and making art for fun, not for validation. I know my creative spark will fade again and I’ll crawl back under the covers, but it won’t be forever. Whatever you did in 2020 was good enough, and so are you. I promise.