A calendar of expiration dates that never expires. View the entire year with this poster size perpetual calendar and mark special days with brightly colored repositionable sticky notes. Created using found expiration dates from food and medical packaging.

Printed with eco friendly inks on an FSC-certified stock. Poster is shipped in a heavy duty mailing tube.

Size: 27 in W x 39 in H Paper: (Poster) 100lb text weight uncoated bright white stock (Sticky Notes) pack of 50, neon orange

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The calendar began from a very personal place. About 4 years ago, my partner and I were in the process of starting a family using fertility treatments. During this period, I was filled with a panicky sense of marking days and tracking the time that was quickly ticking by. My body was getting older and quite literally expiring. We were out one night commiserating over the whole process and commented on how there are select things, like food or medicine, that are assigned somewhat arbitrary and visual expiration dates, but in fact, most things expire. One of us made an offhanded comment about the irony of creating a calendar of expiration dates that never expired.

After that, I kept coming back to the idea and started becoming obsessed with collecting dates. I have always been an avid collector of old things and discarded ephemera. I often begin a project by amassing some type of collection (anything from old glass medicine bottles to cookbook illustrations). Then I use these collections in some form as the content of the project.

Once I had a good batch of dates, I would scan just the date portion at a high resolution. Then I would increase the contrast so that just the shape of the date was visible. The layout was done on the computer, and the final layout was printed on a large format off-set press.

In terms of my aesthetic process, I knew I wanted to keep the organic and rough nature of the dates intact, but I also wanted the piece to be functional. It seemed important that the calendar be usable, but break out of the traditional grid format. In addition, the vertical format of each month’s dates looks more linear than the horizontal dates found on a traditional calendar; for me, the vertical form seemed to better represent the passing of time.

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