Creating FACING OUR AGE was my first time working as a visual artist/story collector without being connected directly to performing a show. What a different experience! Working for months before on the possible lay-out was baffling as there were so many variables:

1. The Ko Festival theme is "age and aging."
- What kind of question do we survey folks with before the Ko Fest starts?
 - How do we display those answers so they are well-represented?

2. The audience would walk through this space before & after seeing a show.
- How could this help them to better understand the themes?
- How could they engage with or add to this installation?
 - How do we give them enough info about what it is without explaining too much?

3. The installation will be outside for the length of the festival (5 weeks).
- How can the materials used age and grow as the festival goes on?
 - What are materials that will not react poorly in weather?

Because I usually work first from an image, my initial brainstorm produced the following:
 - Vines growing up a grid or net - statistics, numbers
- Information hanging on the grid, able to be added to
- Some way that people could see themselves in the installation
 - A structure that would force people would move through a certain path
- Clouds
 - Representation from ages 2-102. 100 stories. 100 years.
 - How do different ages teach each other things? What do we remember? Forget?

 All of these images remained disparate islands for quite a while. I couldn't yet discover how they were connected. I asked friends for advice. Talked it out. Then I decided to poll an international audience online: "What are 5 things that you associate with being the age you are now?"

What did I think I would do with this info? I started to dream up that these incoming images would be the visual representation of each decade. What did the way people were answering teach me?
 - Their actual words were integral: People wrote such specific, eloquent things.
 - The words were funny, touching, true, surprising, similar, different. Perfect.
- People took the liberty to respond in different ways. Some 5 words. Others paragraphs of info. Even poetry.
 - It was important to keep the responses together. Each set made up the story of one person.

Arriving at the Ko Festival with three days to build, I thought I might make a giant abacus. I surveyed the space which was surrounded by construction and only accessible from one direction. Hmm. I met the three interns that I would be working with - Cami, Nate, & Margot. What do you do when you don't know what to do? Admit it and ask for input.

At the end of our first session, Margo asked: "What was your original impulse as to what this would be about?" My answer, "finding a way to get people to empathize with and be surprised by other ages."

Yes! And off went... a brainstorming adventure that didn't stop until we opened. Excited by the results still coming in, we went exploring for ways to shape a structure, we tested materials, we asked others what they thought, we wore party hats. We made friends with folks at Home Depot.

We had fun and created a pretty incredible thing. I could never have had this exact idea at the beginning of this process, but as always, all of the original images have somehow woven in to what you see as our final product...

You can read what others wrote, add your own, and best of all people in birthday hats ask you to choose: "If you could be any age tonight, what would it be?" And then you get to wear that for the rest of the night. It definitely starts a conversation about age...

 - Kali Quinn, Installation Artist