3

Jordyn Bonds

Did you have previous associations with this number before making this work?
Boy howdy, did I! I have several types of synaesthesia, one of which is numerical. For me, that means numbers have colors and personalities. 3 is a pale orangey yellow and 3's personality is marked by innocence, reticence, and ambivalence. 3 is easy going, but to a fault. They don't know who they are or what they want. I say "they" because that ambivalence extends even to their gender – it's just one more thing they don't have much of an opinion about. But underlying it all is the idea of something nascent, ready to blossom into something more specific, but always in the future at a distant time that never arrives.

What inspired you to make this piece?
My inspiration for this piece was definitely my sense of 3 as a "person". I have a flat file where I keep all of my clippings from years of magazines and illustrated books, so I just held 3 in mind as I rifled through everything, quickly zeroing in on things with a warm yellow tint, but also green to convey newness. The images I settled on convey innocence, not being in a hurry, newness, comfort. There's nothing challenging or sharp here– they're pleasing, easy to look at, welcoming and non confrontational.

Aside from a response to this number, what does the work say to you now that you've made it?
I'm glad you asked this! Looking at it now, it seems more like the sloth is having a dream of its own about maybe some exciting food and a cool apartment. It's almost like the sloth is 3 and the piece is inviting me to reconsider how I've thought about 3 in the past – maybe there's more going on in there than I thought! Perhaps 3 has dreams and goals, but has a hyper-patient way of pursuing them. It's not surprising that I couldn't necessarily see that before; I'm a pretty fast-moving, impatient person. Perhaps what I mistook for ambivalence or reticence is just a pace of change that I find imperceptible. One of the joys of having numerical and grapheme synaesthesia for me has been my shifting relationship to these "people" who I think I know so well. They've been my constant companions since I learned to read and count, but I'm always discovering new things about them and new things about myself as I interact with them. Working on this piece seems to be yet another example of that!

Jordyn Bonds was born in North Dakota and has been collaging since high school. She also makes music, software, and tea (in ascending order of quantity). She has very little formal training in anything herself, but values and admires the studied expertise of others.