As an artist, I’m always interested in looking at the defining moments in our lives, understanding how these moments affect us and finding different ways to represent them.

Phil Hansen: Embrace the shakeWe all face limitations. I had the amazing opportunity to share my story at the TED conference this year. I came to do the art I do today not by a well-defined path, but by a defining moment in my life when I learned to “embrace the shake.”

Ever since I started preparing this talk last year, I thought a lot about the limitations we deal with and how they define us. It made me question why they sometimes hold us back and, at other times, push us forward. I became very curious about this process, and I wondered: if we looked at all our limitations collectively, what kind of patterns would we see? And what kind of insights would we have? When we hear other peoples’ stories, we often see reflections of our own struggles, triumphs, fears and hopes, which can give us new perspectives.

So, I had the idea to give out my phone number – it’s 651-321-4996 — and ask people to share a story about a limitation they’ve faced in their life. Many of these stories will be written to create a singular piece of art — based on the photograph below, which I took years ago in Seattle during a time when my limitation held me back from doing art. Every time I look at it, it reminds me of being rudderless and gives me a sense that life is always shifting in turbulent beauty.

Anyone is welcome to watch via the live feed (check it out below, or through my personal website) as each story is written onto the canvas. In the end, there’s a greater story to be told as we reflect on the stories of our lives. On that note, the second part of this project is to bring out the essence of this shared art experience by filming it, and putting together a short documentary. I’m asking people to back it through Kickstarter and, in the end, want to share it with all of you online.

I started the art for this project on Thursday, May 16. So far, it has given me the opportunity to connect with people from all walks of life. Occasionally, when I’m busy, someone will call me endlessly — 15 times or more — because they just need to get it out of their system. It’s a lot to juggle sometimes, between talking to people, making the art, and filming for the short documentary. But so far, it’s worth it. Here are a few stories people have told me so far:

“I was told that my learning disability would make it difficult to finish college. Now I’m having to decide between attending Stanford and Harvard — both universities fighting over me for grad school.”

“My limitation is simply myself. I always question whether I’m good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, artistic enough. I’m my own worst critic, and I struggle with it everyday.”

“Sometimes I lay awake at night wondering what will happen to make me willing to make the HUGE lifestyle change that would be required to lose over 200 pounds.”

There are a couple of really interesting elements that have already revealed themselves in this process. Many of the people I’ve talked to often feel completely alone in their experiences — like no one could have possibly gone through what they have. But then I will run into another story that is very similar to theirs. If you boil it down to just the limitation, with all the personal details removed, what you’ll see are all of our core human experiences.

I hope that people who share their stories can get a different perspective by seeing the limitation that seems so massive become so small on this huge canvas. In the end, I hope that when anybody looks at the final art piece, they can find a story that they connect with.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

In art school, Phil Hansen developed a shake in his hand. He couldn’t so much as draw a straight line anymore. After years of excelling in pointillism, his tight grip of the pen had caused permanent nerve damage.

“To me this was doomsday. This was the destruction of my dream of becoming an artist,” says Hansen in his talk in Session 2 of TED2013.  ”I left art school and, then, I left art completely.”

Hansen was lost. But a neurologist helped him find his way again with three words: “embrace the shake.”

At this unusual prompting, Hansen decided to let his hands do what they wanted to do — make scribbles. He realized that he could create beautiful portraits using this approach. He started experimenting, using his feet to paint or a blowtorch to create faces in wood.

“Embracing the limitation can actually drive creativity,” says Hansen, who describes a moment of unproductivity that came, ironically, when he had all the supplies he needed. “We need to first be limited in order to become limitless.”

Some of Hansen’s surprising works:

• a portrait on stacked Starbucks cups
• a painting done with karate chops
• asking people to tell him stories about life-changing moments, which he then wrote on a revolving canvas
• live worms assembled into an image
• a tattooed banana, created with pushpins
• a painting done with hamburger grease

Hansen also found himself fascinated with the idea of destroying a piece after creating it. Calling it Goodbye Art, he made a scultpture of Jimi Hendrix out of matchsticks — and then burned it. He did works in frozen wine and sidewalk chalk. He also set up images in candles, blown out before they fully existed, and only captured on time-lapse video.

“Destruction brought me back to a neutral place where felt refreshed,” Hansen says. “As I destroyed each project, I was learning to let go — let go of failures, let go of imperfections. I found myself in a constant state of creation, thinking only of what’s next and coming up with more ideas than ever.”

Hansen thinks this might be a good process for others, too.

“Now when run into barrier or find myself creativly stumped, I sometimes still struggle … but I try to remind myself of the possibilities,” he says. “Perhaps instead of telling each other to seize the day, maybe we can remind ourselves each day to seize the limitations.”