Elle Luna on The 100 Day Project
how it all got started...and what's next
Hi, friends—
If you’ve been here for awhile, you know that Elle Luna has been part of The 100 Day Project story from the very beginning. And if you’re newer here, today you get a peek behind the curtain—back to a time when this was just a lightbulb moment and a handful of people saying, sure, let’s try this.
Let’s go back to the early 2010s. A different moment in time (and a completely different internet). A different version of all of us.
In this first part of our conversation, Elle tells the origin story—how the project came to be free and open to everyone online, why it mattered then, and why it keeps coming back around.
You first started The 100 Day Project over a decade ago. What was the inciting spark back then, and what keeps you coming back now?
First of all, thank you for having me Lindsay. You do so much for the community, and I speak for everyone when I say that we appreciate all that you do. Thank you.
As for The 100 Day Project all those years ago…
It was before dinner, and I decided to go for a walk through the little Mexican town where Amber Rae was leading a retreat called The Alive Tribe.
The back roads were elegant and simple, narrow with brightly colored doors and stoops. The town felt like a living altar. Maybe it was the session I had attended that day, or maybe it was the magic of the little town, but an idea arrived spontaneously, like one of those cartoons where the lightbulb goes on and the character changes their journey.
The lightbulb was this: in 2006 Michael Beirut, a legendary (and funny and very kind) designer, taught a workshop for the graduate design students at the Yale School of Art. I couldn’t get enough of this project after I read about it on Design Observer.
It sounded quirky and hard but maybe fun, maybe?, to do in a group. Interestingly, at that time in my life I happened to be in the process of applying to art school for my Masters in Fine Art, and I decided to apply to Yale so I could join the pilgrimage of courageous students traversing the 100 day terrain together. But, alas, I didn’t get in.
It wasn’t until many years later, in 2014, on that dusty road, that the lightbulb went off—I didn’t have to go to Yale to do Michael’s 100 Day Project!
My steps quickened. Would Amber want to do it? (She did.) Would others in our group be interested? (They were!) How would we organize ourselves? (On Instagram! With a hashtag!) Could we create the kind of accountability Michael’s class had engendered? (Only one way to find out.)
My personal life in 2014 could poetically be described as a dark night of the soul. But it didn’t feel poetic. It felt like tar. Heavy. Sticky. All encompassing tar. So if that lightbulb idea meant a lot, you can only imagine the hope and warmth I felt in looking around at our dinner table that night, a group of smiling faces, all committing to create for one hundred days together. It was so much more than an art project; it felt like the sun rose twice that day.
We shared our dates on Instagram and hundreds, then thousands, of people joined us. I couldn’t believe it.
And here we are, now in 2026, thirteen years later, still doing this wild and wondrous project together, in yet another chaotic time, a dark night of the planet. But we have done The 100 Day Project through Covid, and we will do it again in 2026, and we will keep doing it.
As ever, the role of the artist and the role of art as a way to center and return what is missing in our souls, in our daily lives—and in our culture—has never been more clear, and perhaps more needed. Creative expression is also a well-travelled road through chaos.
Do you have a sense yet of what your project will be this year? If so, how did you choose it? What’s your best advice for picking a project?
Not yet. But I have always wanted to do a really simple project. A project so simple that it seems impossible. Michael wrote about a few that have big constraints and force creativity:
Like Hilla Katki’s (above) 100 uses for a folding wooden chair. Here she is on Day 22 turning it into a shield. Or Rachel Berger’s project, photo below, where “Every day for one hundred days (from October 30, 2008 to February 6, 2009) I picked a paint chip out of a bag and responded to it with a short writing.”
A bag of paint chips. A chair. I like that kind of rugged structure. Maybe I’ll get the courage to try on a project like that this year. We’ll see.
Thank you, Elle! We’re going to pause here for today—tomorrow, we’ll pick back up with process painting, getting unstuck, and the power of making art with other people, plus an opportunity to try something new.
But before you go: here’s a little sneak peek.
One of the things Elle’s been working on lately is a small-group, live, make-together experience with her friend Heather—very much in the spirit of everything she’s talking about here. We’ll share more context tomorrow, but if your ears perk up at the idea of art and actual human beings in the same room (or Zoom), you can take an early look at it here:
More tomorrow!
XO,
Lindsay
I remember when you wanted Elle to be a speaker for Women Catalysts...and then told me you were going to manifest her as your friend 🥰 What will you manifest, next?!
LOVE the origin story! This will be my second year of participation. Not quite committed to what I think I'll do, but excited to join in this collective of creativity.