Þ     All formulas are anti-copyright.

Þ     Formulas are presented in no specific order.

Þ   To conserve the limited number of “i”s and “e”s, all words within ()’s function as examples.

 

Look at a complex place (Long Island) through the lens of a silly object (a knish) appropriately connected to said place.

Be an adult and child at once: Play Floor-is-Lava! at the age of 21. Record the trip.  Play dress-up at the age of 22, but don’t be an actor. Just play.  Document yourself playing.

Use part of your body (a breast) to mold a functional object (a teacup).

 

Create work in one medium (paintings) and make it act as another medium (photos) [Make paintings that act as photos. Take pictures that act as paintings.]

 

Instead of eating the peanut butter at the bottom of your jar, open a new one to avoid sticky fingers.

Look for an obscure artifact (a painting made by a Thai elephant) on the web. Purchase it and present it as the work, the reason why humans are uniquely terrible.

 Interview yourself.

 

 Get the materials you work with (paint, blue foam) in your hair.

 

Appreciate things people forget about (pinecones, peanuts, annoyances, tree stumps, oysters, beetles).

Secretly give a small object (a walnut) to other artists, and don’t tell them why.

 

 

Because someone died, do something (photograph red cars) unrelated to the fact that you lost this person.

 

 

Depict anything besides yourself (clothes on your bedroom floor) for a self-portrait.

Make the title of your work a simile (Like an Elephant Forced to Paint Love) that can be used to remark on daily life: “A wedding for my cat? That’s……that’s so……That’s like an elephant forced to paint love!”

Secrete bodily fluids (urine) in a public space, and “pedestal” it.

 

Spend hours writing about something perplexing (what is art?)

White-out parts of a book (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)  you don’t like, or do it just because white-out is lovely.

Be a kind person, but involve criminal themes in your work.

Make an accident (someone cleaned up your installation) apart of your piece.

Reveal a private thing you do (pop pimples), but hold viewers at a marked distance.

Change (by sanding, by crushing) an object (a found chair, a blue vase) without reason, direction, or end.

Use extraordinary materials (shopping bags) to make an ordinary object (a dress) 

Remember specific details of your favorite public bathroom.

 

Make work, but don’t tell anyone about it.

Place a material (salt) in a container that shouldn’t hold it (a well.)

Make everything yellow because you love it.

Be a short person who makes large sculptures.  Be a tall person who makes small sculptures.  

Find the material you work with (blue foam) in your food (a salad). Avoid ingesting it.

Collect everything you’ve purchased (food wrappers, music, paper, books) for a certain period of time (a month) and turn these items into a sculpture.

 

Write to other people (your family and distant relatives) in order to understand someone you don’t remember (your dad).

 

Loose sleep because you’re too excited about your ideas.

Don’t cut your hair for six years.

Freeze an object (a bouncing rubber band ball, a rocket) in motion by building it from a heavy material (plaster, scrap metal)

Form a crush on an artist (Dave Hardy, Beth Campbell, Sol LeWitt, Ruby Styler, David Horvitz).

Form a crush on someone’s work.

Spend more time in your studio (the Barney, your bedroom, your sketchbook) than the time you spend sleeping.     

Apologize to someone you love (a cat) through a piece.

 

Stage a private act (an orgasm) in a public space (a library).

 

Bring your disagreements from critique into a different arena (a large rave bubble scattered with wrestling mats and flour).

 

Put your work in the Museum of Modern Art, but don’t tell the gallerists. 

Love another artist.

Name your hard drive (Apricot).

 

Erase something (a sign) by creating it over, and over, and over.

Make an inanimate object (a microwave) speak (about relationships, on Love). 

Adore someone from a painting (Olympia, Hello Kitty, Mao).

 

Openly hate your professor, but get an A in his/her class. 

 

Get part of your body (a foot) caught in your medium (a plaster mold).

 

Make molds of your feet from plaster, but don’t involve tickling in your sculpture.

 

Make your friends say disgusting things about you. 

Make a piece about private issues (family tensions) through textless, un-symbolic imagery (a chalkboard drawing of flow charts).  

Make one part of the body (penis) look like a part of the body it is not (nipples, breasts, and ass).

Immediately associate certain colors (red and yellow) with a food (ketchup and mustard).

Use ampersands.