Material Traces began as a conversation between a photographer-researcher and their mother, both drawn to the question of how we stay present to our creative practices without demanding output or performance.

This journal holds 90 days of prompts—some arrived through years of embodied inquiry work, others emerged from [your mom's practice/background]. Together, they form a constellation of attention: invitations to work with mouthfeel, memory-texture, the weight of color, the shape of silence.

The work lives in dialogue with thinkers and artists whose practices continue to reshape what it means to notice, trace, rest, and create—from Sara Ahmed's phenomenology of orientation to Robin Wall Kimmerer's attention to reciprocity, from James Baldwin's insistence on witness to Ocean Vuong's tenderness with language.

This is not a guided journal with neat boxes to fill. It's a container for dailiness and deviation, for the small gestures that accumulate into practice. Each prompt offers a departure point. Where you go from there is yours.

For the full constellation of influences and resources, visit chimerical.xyz