Sunday, July 13, 2008

Art Journaling has begun

I get these little....interests....crushes....(obsessions) pretty frequently. I hope that doesn't make me a dilettante, I prefer to think of it as "renaissance mind" (is that pompous?) I've been fascinated by art journals for a little while now. The extension of that is visual journaling - to me these are two separate things. The art journal is strictly about art - a place to try out new techniques, keep track of the things your doing. The visual journal is a lot closer to written journal - except instead of just writing words on a page with lines, you illustrate your thoughts and feelings and you can write in them, or not.

This visual journaling thing must have been invented for visual type people (yes, I'm one of those) because it seems to be opening up a whole new way of thinking in my mind. I've been working on mine all weekend (in addition to creating some ATC's for the innaugural meeting of the Altered Artists of Central Florida this coming week - whee!). Here's the thing, though...I can't really show it to you. Ok, the picture above is one of the pages - I can't talk about something on here and NOT show it to you. That's not fair. But you'll probably hear more about it than see it. I have to keep some stuff for me :-)

The visual journal isn't about art - it's about getting whats inside out, with the idea that it's as personal as a written journal is. Nobody has to see it, it's like your own little treehouse in your mind that nobody else but you gets to go in. I love the idea of having my own little secret lair that I can escape to. It happens to be in the person of a handmade journal from Thailand that somebody gave me a few years ago. I was using it for keeping track of my unmounted rubber stamp images (what a mundane use for such a thing) but I finally decided (after much deliberating "is this right?" should I bind it with wire? should I use a new blank book? should I use what I got? what size is right? what paper is right?) to use it.

Well, right up there with my thoughts last week on "use what you got" instead of going out and buying new, I decided to re-purpose my stamping index journal. Somehow the idea that the pages are already all inky and used makes me feel comfortable about redecorating my lair. I had the same experience when I was making my entry for Somerset Studio magazine (mailed this week - with much feeling of anxiety that I was letting my little art brain child loose into the world where I couldn't take care of it.) I repurposed it out of a previous art piece that I'd made too. I think I'm going to explore this idea of not feeling comfortable about working in something that hasn't already been used before. I'm not sure what it means, but you know where to find me working it all out.......

By the way, I tried out a few new ideas when I was painting the pages - and I LOVE them. I actually think it is some of my more interesting work - probably because I can be free to experiment without judgment - even if all that judgment is all sitting right in my own mind. Odd, huh?

2 comments:

Cindy said...

One of the beautiful things about art journaling, blatantly evidenced in this low res photo, is that handwriting really becomes part of the overall work. It doesn't at all look like art with writing on top. It is very cohesive.

I'm glad you are gaining such inspiration from following down a new path!

Anonymous said...

oh honey - you GOT it girl -

now GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

xox - eb.