Matt Jenkins: #366Hooks
to
C2 Centre for Craft 1-329 Cumberland Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1T2
Matt Jenkins, "#366Hooks," 2018
Opening Reception on First Friday, September 7, 5-9 pm
Artist Talk with Matt Jenkins: September 12, 7 pm
#366Hooks is a collection of work from one (leap) year in the life of blacksmith Matt Jenkins of Cloverdale Forge. Starting on January 1, 2016 Jenkins crafted a hook every day for a one-year period using materials, tools, and skills that any 1850’s blacksmith would have had access to. Images of the hooks, some accompanied by short videos detailing their creation or potential use, were posted daily to his Instagram feed.
The recent popularity of 365-day projects amongst creatives online speaks to the appeal discipline, repetition, and accountability that such projects represent. Serving at once as design sketchbook, promotional tool, and spiritual practice, one-a-day projects like #366Hooks push artists past mental blocks and into new creative terrain, taking their ever growing audience along for the ride.
For Jenkins, #366Hooks became a diary of materials, technical challenges, commissions, and the ongoing narrative of life. Each hook has a story to tell – of off-cuts from other jobs, of motifs noted while travelling, of inspiring mentors, colleagues, and objects around the world, of special occasions, of the oh-shit moment when the artist remembers, on the way to bed, that he hasn’t yet produced his hook of the day and trudges blearily back to the shop to bang out one more piece!
While the small daily act of forging the simplest of utilitarian objects may seem mundane, multiplied 366 times, it becomes monumental. #366Hooks is the sum of its parts and more: a testimony to the power of accumulated experience as the route to achieving mastery in one’s craft.