(photo: Milwaukee Art Museum, by Michael Newman/Flickr)
On the last weekend of 2009 I gathered with four friends in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was a good setting, as we’d all met in Wisconsin. Since leaving Madison a few years, we had dispersed on our own adventures, but with the shared idea that we might reconvene and work together again. This December meeting was our chance to follow through with that idea.
That weekend, a few of us took a trip to the Milwaukee Art Museum and walked down a stretch of Lake Michigan. Along the way, a torrent of projects, ideas, and schemes emerged as if they had been waiting to boil over. We refused to limit our speculations, and spent the rest of the night debating the possibilities.
By the end of the weekend we’d settled on three important points: place, time, and name. The place being New York City, the time being the end of August 2010, and the name being The Notion Collective.
The last of those three was by far the hardest, and was the product of months of deliberation. The root of that name — “notion” — is based on how we’ve operated in the past: beginning with a notion — a kernal of an idea — and slowly and meticulously polishing that idea until it shines.
The plan was (and is) vague, ambitious, and somewhat uncertain. We’ll combine our talents to help pay the bills, and work on our own projects, whatever they may be. We’re still in the beginning stages of figuring out the first part of that mission, but this site is a step into the second. The hope is that this can be a public space to answer the question we’ve been hearing since we committed to this project: “What will you do?”
In many ways, this organization itself is a kind of notion — an idea that we all share, overlapping in many places but still largely undeveloped — and this is where we begin to refine that idea. If you’re wondering what will take shape (as we are), this is a good place to start.
—Andy
This post has Notes and tag: # introduction # milwaukee # notion # collective .
