10000 Times

Ana Mengote Baluca
3 min readJan 24, 2022

An art project in the making.

I’ve always been fascinated by time and space. I’ve always wanted to find some kind of understanding about the relationship of the two. It might’ve been one of the driving forces of my curiosity and interest in Science back then.

Fast forward a little over a decade later, the scientific parts of me is more of a subtext from my main identity as a Designer. And somehow Science or at least my curiosity and drive to bring forth meaning or express the way I understand big concepts still influence my artistic pursuits. This is how this project began, as a silly way of imagining an inter-dimensional portal; a concept that my inner-child constantly explores.

But in all seriousness, this is my biggest art pursuit so far. And I want to invite you while I make them. My prompt is to make 10,000 post-it notes in the same type of doodle I’ve been doing since the beginning of the pandemic. The doodle style is what I envision you might see when you’re in transit from one place/space/dimension to another.

Preview: 9 post-it notes intentionally drawn as a cluster.

When I look at them, I see an invitation to let my mind wander and to envision a space where I would rather be.

This project is an exercise of faith and trust in the process, of setting a goal to do this 10,000 times without having a clear picture on how each of them relate to the other ones. 10,000 3"x3" post-it notes can cover over 600sqft of wall space. Each doodle can take between 5min — 20min.

I nearly gave up after the first two hours of doing this, because after having crampy hands, I finally did the math on the approximate length of time it would take me to finish just the post-it notes, and I was not happy. To offset that, I want to invite you in my journey as I write about my process and thoughts in a somewhat regular way as I build this project. Having an audience is like having an accountability buddy, so I aim to keep writing about the process here. It’s also my way of documenting how the work is going, and in the end I hope when it’s presented that having these blurbs give the whole project more meaning.

Some extra ramblings:

  • I am looking for a gallery or a space where these post-it notes can be displayed for at least a month. Suggestions?
  • I am also digitizing and minting each one of them as an NFT because I want to push their ‘inter-dimensional’ aspect and it seems like the best way to do so.
  • No clear deadline yet, but I hope to have the collection up on opensea within the first half of the year, and for the physical show to be done around the same time.

If you’re intrigued, I hope you follow my journey while I introspect and pursue this project. I’d love to hear any comments you may have.

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Ana Mengote Baluca

Design and Strategy. Writing about design things and things in Design.