About My Project: 1001 Pieces, a visual journal.

In the summer of 2025, I started a creative ritual: 1001 Pieces, a visual journal. Almost every day, I work on something: a piece of jewellery or an art object. Sometimes it’s minimal, sometimes baroque. Architectural or delicate. Loud, or just a whisper.

This practice was born from a need to finally use the materials I’ve collected and learned to make. As the techniques I’ve studied over the years.

1001 Pieces is a commitment to making without overthinking. It’s not about perfection or trends, but about showing up. Curiosity, doubt, and accident are part of the process. Even the smallest object can hold meaning.

I work with whatever the piece calls for, porcelain, paper, fabric, plastic, silver, glass. Digital and traditional tools coexist. There’s no hierarchy, just honest response.

The pieces are experiments. Some tell personal stories, old and new frustrations, happy and sad memories. Others are purely about form or feeling. There’s no plan, no destination. Just a steady rhythm of making. One by one, the pieces mark time.  I don’t seek consistency, only truth.

1001 Pieces is both a structure and a rebellion. A rhythm that keeps me creating, telling stories, and a refusal to brand, polish, or explain too much. Each piece is a quiet fragment of a day lived.

I don’t know if it will take me two years, eight months, and twenty-eight days, the full span of 1001 days (which probably won’t happen) or five years—or maybe the rest of my life. I’m not old, but I’m no longer young. What I do know is this: each day, I will work on a piece.

About The name
1001 Pieces1001 is an absurd yet beautiful number, large enough to require serious commitment, yet poetic enough to keep the project open-ended. Like 1001 Nights, it becomes a story told in fragments, night after night.

About Mick Michel

Half Dutch, half Belgian, I’m now based in Altea, Spain. My creative path started early, working in theatre and film design in Antwerp, before studying at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht and earning a Master’s in Art from the University of Portsmouth.

For over 25 years, I worked as a freelance creative director for agencies across Europe. Along the way, I co-founded Confituur and Mick + Wout, one a creative studio in Antwerp, the other a nomadic design practice. I also co-directed KUNST, a contemporary art gallery in Sitges, near Barcelona. Throughout, I stayed close to art, though my own studio practice remained mostly in the background.

That has changed.
Now, at 58, I’ve made a conscious decision: to stop working for others and return to the studio full-time. Not to chase success, but to reclaim a sense of fulfilment and purpose. To make work that is honest, alive, and uncompromising.

My focus is on form, colour, and texture, foundational elements that continue to surprise me. In a world that claims to celebrate diversity, artists are still often encouraged to fit into neat, sellable boxes.

I resist that. My creative practice is deliberately open-ended, driven by curiosity, instinct, and material—where no subject or medium is off-limits.