Journalling: 1 step back - 2 giant steps forward ...

Bet you wondered what happened to that journal I was going on about. Yep, I'm still journalling, but haven't had time to post lately. And let's not talk about what's happening to my computer. It (apparently) is reaching the end of a long and creative life ... riddled with feebleness and memory loss and just straight out crankiness. Are computer years like dog years, I wonder? I simultaneously long for and dread the inevitable upgrade. So I'm limping along for now ... several times I started this post and lost it. Today I'm ready to try again and hoping the computer gods are with me.

Since my last posting, I hit a roadblock and rethought the whole structure of my journal. The coiled book seemed like *such* a good idea when I began. But of course within weeks it was too heavy to carry around, thus defeating the whole purpose. I decided to go back to my original idea of working in individual signatures which I would stitch together at year end into one "annual". So, I took apart my giant coiled journal and rebound it into 20-page signatures, attaching the pairs of hole-punched pages together with masking tape (on both sides of the page, for strength) and gave each signature a "temporary" cover using the ubiquitous press clean-up sheets I scavenge from work.

And then I decorated the covers. I still intended to stitch them all together at year end, but man - the pile is almost 2" thick and I'm only at August. By the end of the year it might be 4" thick, and the idea of re-reading my journals (which I actually DO) also might mean snapping my little hands off at the wrist. And I was exhausted at the prospect of carting the finished volume to a photocopier somewhere. So now I'm thinking maybe I'll just make a slipcase for them at year end. And, as a friend pointed out to me the other day, it's like my very own personal set of magazines, which is pretty darn cool.

Anyway ... thought I'd share the new covers with you. They began (as most of my artwork does) as Something Else. Whenever I go off to an art retreat, I give myself the first evening to "not be creative". I let go of any expectations and just spend some time with the materials, absorb the joy of being with my art friends again and let my creativity find its groove. At the last retreat I thought I'd take a crack at making Soul Collage cards. But (as usual) I almost immediately broke 2 of the rules: I went for 8x10 (which coincidentally is the page size of  my journals) and I included text (just a little, here and there). Anyway ... fell in love with the collages and came home with the plan to shrink them down to Soul Collage card size. Only the proportion wasn't right, but I LOVED them. So I took the photocopies and glued one to the front of each of my new journal covers and added some washi tape, and a number, et voila!

The new journal covers ... pretty spiffy, hm?

Someone asked me the other day where I got my images ~ for collages, my journals, these covers, and other things, and I have to admit these journal covers benefited very much from one of my art friends bringing a stack of Communication Arts magazines to the retreat, combined with my own little stack of National Geographics, but generally I just keep my eyes open for anything that looks interesting. Most of what I work with I pick up in the everyday ~ newspapers, flyers, junk mail, etc. You never know what's going to go with what. And I love it when things come together and tell their own new story.

The astronaut on Journal #1 came from an article in NG about a man obsessed with space travel. The lightbulb on Journal #2 was an article in CA about brainstorming as a group, and the bird was a matchbook cover. The elevator in the canyon on Journal #3 was a CA ad for something having nothing to do with either elevators or canyons, the feet underwater were from an ad about foot pain relief (!). Mr. Intuition on Journal #5 was an ad for a sales conference + I added the text and new eyes (the old ones looked too sneaky for me). The hands at the top of Journal #6 were from an ad for virtual team building over a phone network ("almost like being there"). So you really just don't know where fun stuff will come from.

As I remarked to a friend the other day, advertisers are pretty shameless about stealing powerful words and images to convince us we have a hole in the center of our being that can only be filled by their product. I feel no guilt whatsoever about stealing back those images and repurposing them to fill my own (alleged) inner void with creative expression - and it works pretty well.

FYI ~ Journals 1 through 5 are already full, and I've still only posted halfway through the first one here, so I guess I better post some more pages here shortly ... but I don't think want to push my luck with the computer gods today. I'll see how they feel tomorrow ...

In the meantime ... release your expectations, follow your intuition, and keep an eye out for cool images, whatever their source.

Sketchbooks revisited ... part two: cover stories

Ever have those days when you're attracted to a particular colour palette? Brown kraft + black + white has always been my thing anyway, and it certainly doesn't hurt that the original covers on the Sketchbook Project Sketchbooks are that nice earthy brown to start with. In my own contributions to The Sketchbook Project, I've never been able to resist covering up everything with colour, but I find all the above covers unspeakably beautiful and oh so wish that I'd come up with them myself.

Left to right on the top row we have: Simple Beautiful Things by Staci Adman, Atlas of Turning 50 by Robin Matthews and Fox + Owl by Shawna Handke
Left to right on the bottom there's: i no longer feel the need to ask permission by kelly letky, untitled by therese murdza and untitled by artist unknown (sorry!).

Staci Adman's Simple Beautiful Things is all it says it is. I highly encourage you to look at the whole book online. I posted one of it's pages, Fall vs. Summer Honey, in my previous post, but truly every single page is quite, quite amazing and made me want to rush home immediately and journal all my little treasures with a similar care and magic. And notice the lovely little beads along the spine - simple AND beautiful!

Fox + Owl is a lovely work of torn text page collage and paint by Shawna Handke. Some pages are breathtakingly beautiful and it would be a tragedy if they weren't seen by more people, so go there now.

Kelly Letky's i no longer feel the need to ask permission is a great example of how to marry striking natural images with deep personal poetry. I felt like I was reading a work that ought to be published for a wider audience.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it barely begins to cover the tactile satisfaction of therese murdza's untitled. omg. I *so* did not want to let this book go. The combination of crunchy gesso, text page collages and simple mark making had me envious at first sight. Why oh why do I fill my sketchbooks with complex cerebral ideas when something like this is so gobsmackingly delicious?

I feel bad about not getting the info on the last book. Up to this point in the day I'd been studiously taking pictures of the back cover of each book, and noting whether or not it was digitized for your viewing pleasure, but I guess the sketchbooks were flying thick and fast and I didn't make a note of the author's name on this one, for which I am truly sorry. I tried finding it on the Sketchbook Project website, but either it wasn't digitized, or wasn't tagged with a searchable word. The book was a touching story of a woman whose mother chose medical denial for what was (by the author's judgement) a 98% treatable kind of cancer. It was a hard read in some ways ... but unable to talk to her mother about her hopes and frustrations, I like to think by telling all of us, she was letting go of things in her own beautiful way. I'll keep looking and see if I can find it online, but (ironically?) the odds aren't good.

Okey, dokey ... time for a little colour! Top left: Encyclopedia of Sharks - Part XI by Pascal Lecocq. Okay ... so Part XI isn't digitized, but some of his previous shark encyclopedias are. If sharks are your thing, I'd start with the first one, and then you can work your way through Parts 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. You don't have to, and of course they're about more than sharks. I just loved his cover, so blue blue blue in a sea of brown (if you'll pardon the pun).

Top right is Atlas of My Dreams by Sonja NYC. I was immediately amazed by the use of thread on the Australian coast on the cover. I pretty much love anything that incorporates fiber in unexpected ways and this was beautifully done. The inner content never mentions Australia, instead it features Alice in Wonderland and sea creatures. Mysterious ...

Bottom left is Greetings from South Africa by Mieke van der Merwe ~ a cover (and book) that shouts it's beautiful detail from start to finish. I know very little about South Africa but this book's lovely colourful  line drawings and paintings of buildings, people, cameras and condiments (condiments?!) makes me want to go there.

Lastly, bottom right, is Map of the Table by Bonnie Hull. Now this is truly a case of not judging a book by its cover. I loved the cover right off ... triangular duct-tape snow-covered mountains, running along a duct-tape road, looking up to a fabulous blue duct-tape sky ... wonderful and tactile ... and absolutely no hint on the cover that inside there's a quirky string of simple line drawings of ... stuff on tables. A sense of the everyday  captured on various tables at various times ... tax time, breakfast time, meeting time, dinner time. I almost saved this one for my next post on fabulous inspiring line drawings, but since this post is about covers, the cover won out.

More next time ...

One for the bees ...

Just a brief little postette ... a bit of art I created over the weekend prompted by a challenge created by Effy Wild for her ning group. Say what you will, but sometimes having a jumping off point can be really satisfying when you're feeling creative but don't really have anything specific in mind.

I thought about "finding" a good bee quote to use as inspiration, but (as usual) the act of reading a bunch of bee quotes and not seeing one that grabbed me generated some writing of my own. When in doubt, use your own stuff, I always say.

The background is blueprint paper that's been gelli printed using my 6x6" gelli plate on Impression Obsession's plexiglass Mega Mount designed for their 6x6 Cover-a-Card rubber stamps. It's a cool quick way to get multiple layers of paint and texture on a big sheet of paper, and I just keep stamping and stamping till I figure that paper's had enough.

The bees are acetone image transfers. They come from Clipart, Etc, my favourite online resource for black and white images (historical, biological, etc etc). The flowers are from Stampin Up. There are a few random bits of collage and washi tape here and there.

The poem was created ransom-note style on scraps of paper using miscellaneous rubber stamp letters, rub-on letters and the ever-so-handy (but impossible to find at the moment?) Tim Holtz Label Letters. If I don't find more of these soon, I may need to make my own, which is a shame since I love the font (Dymo labeler!) and how each letter is already pre-cut. I created each word separately and then figured out the word spacing on the finished piece afterward.

Nothing too grand, but for some reason I really like it. It's funny (at least to me) that I'm always trying for "casual primitive" and wind up with "neatly organized". Think I'll just blame it on my Virgoness and learn to live with it.

Always make two ...

In the last few weeks I've had a few conversations (with other artists) about how we work or (more accurately) what works for each of us. One of the turning points in my creative process was the concept of "always make two". I wish I could say I'd come to this process through logic, but it actually started as a cost-saving measure.

At the time (several years ago) I was involved in a lot of collaborative and round robin altered book projects. I felt I needed to remember what I'd done in each book, and also (rather feebly) I *really* don't like letting my art go. It's not that I'm not generous (I like to think I am) but I grow quite attached to the finished object, and merely holding it takes me back through all the positive emotions I had while creating it. I don't think liking to hang onto my stuff makes me crazy. I'm just saying.

In the beginning I would photocopy what I'd done in other people's altered books before I sent them on their way. Given the volume of stuff I was doing at the time, this was getting to be quite expensive, not to mention that I'd have to drag the books to wherever to have them copied, fiddle with getting copiers to handle thick books with pages that were never ever exactly 8.5x11. One day it occurred to me that  I could easily make two pages in two books at the same time while I had all the materials spread out on the work table.

And it *really* paid off when I created pages with interactive bits to them (cards in pockets, flaps to lift, etc).

The more I did it, the more creating two of everything at the same time paid off. Eventually I figured out why this was so satisfying and beneficial for me ...

Firstly (as mentioned above) it cures the separation anxiety I feel when my art is sent off to someone else.

Secondly, it allows me to experiment more freely in the middle of a project without worrying that I'll have to go back to step one if it all suddenly goes pear-shaped (i.e.: what the heck was I thinking?!). Since I work in a printshop, I'm quite accustomed to making things in multiples and will often make three or four of something even if only one is required ~ just so I'll have a backup, and be able to mess about with a few different directions in the middle of creating. It's probably important to mention here that I tend to work small and with modest materials, so the cost of doing four of something is not going to break the bank.

Thirdly, keeping one of everything I make is like having a bank of prototypes for future projects. I can easily refer back to a previous object to see how I attached this to that, or how that paint looked on that surface, etc. It's like my own handmade reference manual of how I've been successful (and also when things have failed ~ which is almost as useful sometimes!).

Lastly (and not insignificantly) it's been a great help in those times when I feel like I haven't got a creative bone in my body ... faced with a project deadline or an unfamiliar material, a glance at my shelves says in the most positive way possible: "you've done it before, you can do it again."

So that's how it happened ... the two of everything habit, and I really *DO* make two of everything ... I leave you with the following ... two versions of a postcard I made for Ed Varney's Mayworks Postcard Exhibit. As you can see each card has slight variations, and when it came time to send one away, I didn't know which to keep ... I liked the shape on the head on one card better, but the shape of the hands on the other. In the end I closed my eyes, shuffled them for a minute and chose at random. Do I love the one I kept? Of course I do.

Missing Artfest ...

As spring gets closer a part of my creative self is remembering this is the time of year (in past years) I'd  be getting ready for Artfest, which was hosted by Teesha and Tracy Moore and a crowd of volunteers. I'd be reading supply lists and gathering materials and thinking about how wonderful it is to gather with hundreds of like-minded artists for 5 intense days of learning and sharing. But (alas) Artfest is no more, so for this part of the process memories will have to do.

Oddly, what I miss most of all is making the trades. Given the population of Artfest (500+ artists), I took real pleasure in making small arty items to share with as many people as possible, and would often make something like 150 of whatever I'd decided to make, usually small books (quelle surprise!). I mean, how often in one's life (unless you're in manufacturing), do you get to sit down and make 150 of anything, particularly a small token of your creative self. Even now I find my fingers twitching to buy some little twiddle I've found in bulk with the idea that it would make an excellent start for trades at Artfest.

Fortunately for me, Artfest has brought some deep and wonderful friendships with other artists and I continue to meet (and retreat!) with them on a regular basis. It also introduced me to some fabulous teachers who I otherwise would only have known through their blogs. Like Roxanne Padgett for instance. It was in her class that I overcame almost all my colour fears. In fact, just looking at her artwork before I went to Artfest led me to Be Brave with Colour while making my Artfest Journal to take with me (as you can see by the front cover above).

And it was in her class more colour fears fell by the wayside as I created the portrait above. It's so completely different from anything I'd done before that I still can't believe I made it myself. I enjoyed her class immensely ~ from the warm up exercises that loosened us up, to the actual techniques of creation (this portrait was developed front to back on a sheet of plexiglass), to seeing the amazing variety of the work by all the other students. I've been eagerly awaiting her book "Acrylic Techniques in Mixed Media: Layer, Scribble, Stencil, Stamp coming out soon, and I'm *so* looking forward to it, although it won't be the same as having her right there encouraging me to *explore*, but it'll have to do.

My experience in her class, and in other Artfest classes have continued to feed and nurture my creative courage even today. So colour me bittersweet - missing Artfest, but loving where it got me.

Celestial Navigation ...

This evening I'm finishing up another art project ... this time an international postcard swap I read about at Artists in Blogland. It seemed like a nice quick little swap, and a good exercise between some larger projects I'm working on.

As well as the three people in the swap I'm sending to, I've also done as the instructions suggestions, I've sent one off to FEATURING Magazine for possible inclusion in an article on mail art, so who knows .. maybe it'll surface again.

For those who know my work, the celestial theme will be familiar, as will the colour scheme. I'm tempted to tell you way too much about all the bits and pieces that went into its creation, but I'll keep this post short and  not get carried away ... let's just say mixed media and leave it at that, shall we?