Dorothea Tanning’s 1942 self-portrait painting, “Birthday,” is one of my all-time favorites. For my 32nd birthday in 2022, I holed up in a fancy hotel outside of Seatac and started a new annual tradition as a play on her piece.

For each birthday moving forward, the hope is to capture some form of self-portrait of my own. Only a few silly snapshots and blind drawings so far, but more to come until I croak or the world finishes exploding.

Bodies are weird. Aging is weird. I want to use each birthday as a marker to document the shifts and changes each new year brings.