Do you remember being asked as a child what you wanted to be when you grew up?  I remember avoiding this question whenever possible as it always made me feel uncomfortable for the following reasons. 

By age 12 I had spent roughly 6 years of my life with one or both legs in plaster casts and had just finished the third knee reconstruction between both knees .  My memory my life till this point is only of waiting rooms, doctors, hospitals needles, and pain.

I had spent my entire life essentially learning that I am broken and needed repairing. 

2 things happened at around this time that resulted in project 117 being born.  My grandmother died, being my first experience with death of someone I knew and had met, and I somehow managed to read Rene Descartes “meditations” in an easy to read translation that caused me to have a mental breakdown that was caused by the existential realisation of my fragile existence.

 During this breakdown I decided that I would live until I was 117.  I do not know why I chose that number however from that period of my life on there has been no other option for me. This is because of that question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I felt, and still feel that the only thing I want to be when I grow up, is alive.  So I need a goal to strive towards as something to live for. 

I do not want kids and always knew this.  I accepted it very early on as I knew, from the years spent in hospital as a child, to the decade or so of amazing living I did in my twenties, to the past 3 years where my return to regular medical visits is taking over my life, I need something to live for.

At the end of 2021 I was made redundant and faced a choice due to my poor health at that time and the long term view that it was not going to get any better.

Living to 117 came immediately to mind in the split second I got the email notice of my redundancy and trying to work out how to do it now I’m in the position I knew would come sometime under age 45 but never knew when exactly.  Turns out I was 38.

I then put into action a plan, long term plan, that has got me this far, Project 117.

So, in a nutshell:

Project 117 is the umbrella Philosophy for all my Art work.  All my Art works are connected in some way and many also have hidden treasures or secrets within them or form part of them, such as the Cryptic coffins. However, everything I do is in the pursuit of living to 117, every project comes under the umbrella project that is, Project 117