I've been thinking about what's missing.

Not from the panels themselves, but from the experience of standing in front of one. You can see the encaustic wax, the reclaimed fabric, the botanical impression pressed into the surface. What you can't see is where the fabric came from, or when the panel was made, or the story behind where the material came from.

That's the part I want to give you.

Here's what I've been imagining: a small chip embedded in each panel, the kind you can tap or hold your phone near, that opens a page that tells you more. The panel's name. The materials in it and where they came from. The story of when it was made and what it holds. Photos of the process. Maybe video, when I have it.

Every panel in Weave of Life already has a story. Most of those stories exist only in my studio notes or in my memory. The NFC chip idea is about making those stories accessible, not just to the people who collect the work, but to anyone who encounters it in an exhibition, a library, a community space, anywhere the panels travel.

Imagine standing at ArtPrize in front of 300 panels and being able to tap any one of them and immediately know: this panel was made from a fabric sample that would have gone to a landfill. This one holds an impression from a honeycomb left behind by bees who moved into a house the week it was being sold. This one was made during a week when I was producing 8.6 panels a day in a living room in Fort Wayne, Indiana, because the work couldn't wait for the right studio.

That's the experience I want to build.

I don't have the full technical picture yet, there's research to do on how the chips work, what infrastructure is needed to host the panel pages, and what it costs to do this at the scale of 700 panels. But I know what I want someone to feel when they tap a panel and a story opens on their phone. I want them to feel like they just learned the name of someone they'd been looking at across a room.

This is one of the next chapters for Weave of Life. If you'd like to support the project's next phase, be part of making this happen, or simply follow along as it takes shape, I'd love to hear from you.

Reach out at nancy@nancyfritzart.com or subscribe if you aren't already following the journey.