Last March, a few artists got inspired by a design exercise. They turned the concept into a social art project, and invited their Instagram followers to do one action every day for 100 days. They encouraged people to share what they made through the Instagram hashtag, #the100dayproject.

I was thrilled to participate. This initial excitement was immediately followed by anxiety about how my action should probably be something “serious” and show off my artistic “talent”. This is a common emotion I experience preceding new projects. The only thing I’ve ever known to combat this kind of anxiety is to dance around and do something so silly it doesn’t matter. So I traded my fancy pens and paint brushes for sharpies and printer paper, and drew the most ridiculous portrait of Nicolas Cage*.

I started small, and did what I could. Commitment doesn’t come easy for me, so I told myself I’d try it out for a few days to see what might happen. I drew them at work, while I was waiting… for my code to run, a page to load, or a meeting to start. I hung each of them on the wall behind me with Scotch tape.

After a few days, something funny started happening. People walking by started asking what these man portraits were doing on the wall. A few well-cultured individuals recognized that beautiful expressive face from a mile away. Questions started coming in, and the only answer I had was that I was doing an art project for 100 days. Every day, my co-workers wanted to know: ‘What is the face today?’ The social commitment was seemingly written in stone.

Admittedly, I’m pretty terrible at keeping routines. During the course of the project, I fell off, I got back on track, and I even had a co-worker fill in for me while I was on vacation. Towards the end of the project, my good friend and fellow troublemaker, Michelle, informed me I was to have a gallery show in July*. Whether I had 100 Cages or not, I was going to hang what I had on a wall. That little kick in the pants helped me get through the last leg of the project. I couldn’t believe it. A gallery show! For me! For all of the silly Cages.

The day of the show came, and I could not have been more stoked to see all of my work up in a gallery. I had never had a gallery show before. This experience blew me out of the water. There were memes and sub-memes made during the show. People playfully fought over who got the bees. I learned more about Nicolas Cage movies than I could ever have dreamed. We made shirts. I finished a project and shared it with the world. I never expected my first gallery show to be of Nicolas Cage, but oh how perfect it turned out to be. It was hilarious. It was ludacris. It was hugely rewarding. Seeing people wear my shirts months later with the Cage faces is still so surreal.