The Other Side of Somewhere

The Surest Thing There Is ...

A short while back I started a new art journal, but quickly had to send it off somewhere for some kind of something (maybe).  Who knows when exactly I'll get it back?  The surest thing I know is, it won't be anytime soon, so I started a fresh journal.  Thank you, Robert Frost for the found text.  I'll need to read the complete poem to see what the surest thing there is, is.

All I know is tomorrow I'll be heading to charming downtown Suffolk for a big art opening extravaganza.  A couple of times a year the artistic community gets together and has a themed show with simultaneous openings (this time the theme is fabric related with each venue featuring a specific concentration).  It's all great fun!  I've kept a low profile with art openings this year after the photo show opening where Mr. P's absence was so keenly felt, but I wouldn't miss tomorrow for anything.  Angelia and I did a collaborative piece - I created a few small and simple paper collages and she combined them with fabrics and thread.  I haven't seen the finished pieces yet, so that will be a nice surprise.

If you're in the Tidewater area, come on out and support this talented and determined group of artists and gallery owners.  The shows open at 2:00 and go through 6:00 p.m.  The city is providing a free trolley that connects all four locations (and three are within nice walking distance).  Parking is also free.  Visit their sites for more detailed information.

Participating venues:

Shooting Star Gallery

The Red Thread Studio

Suffolk Museum

Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts

I need to charge my camera.  Hopefully I'll remember to snap some photos to share!

Insert Catchy Title Here

Latest journal page spread in my journal. 

The little texty bit at the bottom reads: "To chase one, don't you know?" 

I've been having so much fun with my journal lately!  I'm glad to get back into it.  I put my journals away for awhile because I was sifting through the same emotional gunk (Mr. P's absence) and it was weighing me down.  I just love this process so much.

Here is my current journaling playlist (ok, well, a portion of it ... the playlist has almost 100 songs, so I chose the 15 songs I'm currently replaying):

1. When it Don't Come Easy (Patti Griffin)
2. Irvine (Kelly Clarkson)
3. Not as We (Alanis Morisette)
4. Iris (The Goo Goo Dolls)
5. Canvas (Madi Diaz)
6. Gravity (Alison Krauss & Union Station)
7. Don't Let Me Get Me (Pink)
8. Rescue Me (Jessica Sonner)
9. Red Light (Jonny Lang)
10. It's Easy to Remember (John Coltrane)
11. Breathe (2 AM) (Anna Nalick)
12. So Far Away (Carol King)
13. Photographs & Memories acoustic (Jason Reeves)
14. Hurt (Johnny Cash)
15. Happy Girl (Martina McBride)

What do you listen to while creating?  Do tell.

And speaking of Mr. P. . . . in the funny way the world works, he will be coming home again at the end of the month for a very short visit!  How cool is that?

Contradictory

 

"My contradictions make perfect sense to me; it isn't my fault the world demands a kind of consistency that's really just a gathering of Emerson's old hobgoblins. (Haven Kimmel, Author of A Girl Named Zippy).

 

She is referring to these hobgoblins:

 

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblins of little minds."  (From the essay Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson).

 

First page in my newest art journal. 

 

I do love the start of a new journal ...

 

... and my contradictions too.

Play

I'm nearing completion of the art journal I began last year around this time.  It's amazing to flip through the pages and see the time passing. 

I think Dorothy Parker once quipped that her favorite part of writing was finishing (I love Dorothy Parker).  I usually agree with her - it's such a satisfying feeling to finish.  But with art journaling, I love every moment of the process too. 

What about you?

1000 Artist Journal Pages (Whee!)

Whee! 

This long anticipated and eagerly awaited book was waiting for me on the doorstep when I arrived home from work a little while ago.  I dropped everything - my purse, my lunch, the mail - and tore the cardboard off the box so I could finally hold this book in my hands.

Oh my.

The book is amazing, gorgeous, and hefty!  320 juicy pages of journal art from all corners of the globe.  I haven't gone through the book page by page yet (the content is deserving of a soft chair, a cold glass of tea and my full attention), but as I quickly turn the pages I see artwork from many of my friends and favorite journal artists and I'm already discovering new favorites. Oh boy oh boy!

I'm also excited because some of my own journal pages are included.  Color me thrilled and happy (and just a tad - ahem - giddy about it all).

Gotta go now and spend some time soaking up the inspiration!

A Year To Be Glad In

It's been awhile since I've worked in my art/visual journal.  I had to put it away last fall after we found out official word about Mr. P, because I just couldn't write or journal about anything other than what was going on and I was sick of dealing with what was going on.  I was totally saturated with frustration, anxiety, and sadness over the whole situation.  The journal became another source of distress so I abandoned it.

Last night I dusted off my current journal and played in it while listening to the football game.  I'd forgotten how much I enjoy painting pages and how much I enjoy layering and responding to the elements I pull randomly from my stash.  This is not deliberate collage, it is more loose and free-flowing, kind of like a dream.  You know how in dreams all kinds of weird and disparate elements float through your head and they don't seem to make sense, but sometimes upon waking you can see a thread woven through?   That's what this kind of journaling feels like to me.   

You can't see it in this photo but at the top of the right hand page is a sliver of found text that reads "a year to be glad in".  When I pulled that from my scrap stash, I felt that little spark and immediately glued it down - it really resonated with me as a journaling topic.  Even though being apart from Mr. P. is not the way I ever imagined I'd be spending 2008, it still can be a year to be glad in. 

My process is a little rusty (I'm sort of in love with the layouts and afraid to write on them, which means that is EXACTLY what I need to do!).

Eight

Today's Artist Trading Card (Day 8):

And a journal page. 

   

I was floored by the random bits of text I found which when I pieced them together, read: "My darling, they put us far apart, away, way off 'cross the seas and such".  I love when that happens!  Piecing together found text (or creating found poetry) is one of my favorite ways of expressing myself in collage.

When I Dream ...

We woke up this morning and went ... fishing.  Well, Mr. P. went fishing and I rode along in the boat.  Friends, it was freezing cold.  My toes went numb almost immediately and for most of the time we were out on the water, I was wishing I had one of these.  Ah, the things we do for love.  Mr. P. helps me with craft shows and I ride along on a November-Almost-December fishing excursion.

Still, I would rather be freezing my toes off in the boat on the day after Thanksgiving, than fighting with my friends and neighbors over the last of a reduced-price Something at a department store before the sun even thinks about coming up.  I'm not quite into the Buy Nothing movement; I am fine with buying and shopping, even on the day after Thanksgiving.  My objection has more to do with the retailers who play to our basest natures by playing games (reducing prices on high ticket items for a limited amount of time or not making enough of something to purposely create a feeding frenzy).  I used to work in marketing (for business to business products and services) and it was such a thrill to provide information to the companies who could use our product/service.  We didn't have to play tricks or create an aura of greed or lack to convince them to buy.  I notice more and more how retailers and advertisers play up competition and keeping-up-with-the-Joneses and it makes me very uncomfortable (the new Big Auction Site's commercials "shop victoriously" makes me ill).  I'm sure there is a middle ground that can be reached here. 

**Putting my soapbox away now**

(ahem)

Not much going on.  Mr. P. is leaving next week ... it's hard to put that aside, but we are doing our best.  Carved out some time to work on a journal page this evening:

Hope all of my American friends had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday!

The Journal "Cure"

Is it ok if I say how much I love the above journal spread?  I loved the process of creating it and I have a serious infatuation with the colors!  Unfortunately I can't seem to get a good photographic rendering of this (probably because this spread does not lay flat; the page on the right is actually the back cover of the hardback book I used for my journal).  Anyway, the warm orange, red-orange, hot pink, combined with that icy aqua is rocking my world! 

A few posts back, I promised I would share my technique for "curing" a journal. 

Last year, I started working on a teaching proposal and needed to create a journal for my prototype.  My normal journal process at that time involved gutting a hardback book (taking out all of the pages) and sewing in lovely sheets of expensive watercolor paper.  That worked fine, but I wanted to offer a more affordable option for potential students.  I ended up using a hardback book (and some of the pages inside) to create a crunchy, sturdy, and intriguing journal.

I did not end up submitting a proposal for teaching but kept the journal I made and used it for one of my Juliana Coles's classes at this year's Art & Soul retreat.

Now it is my favorite journal to use.  I see myself using this kind of journal for the foreseeable future.

Here's how you do it.  This process doesn't really lend itself to photographs ...

1. Choose a hardback book of any size.

2. You'll need to section the pages that will become your page spreads AND remove pages to reduce bulk.  I counted three pages and clipped those three pages with a paper clip.  Using an exacto knife, I then sliced out (completely removed) 10 pages.  Then I counted three more pages and clipped those three pages with a paper clip.  Then removed 10 pages.  Then clipped 3 and removed 10 ... you get the idea.

3. For each section of 3 pages, I removed the clip and slathered soft gel medium on all sides of the pages (except the front and the back) and pressed the pages together.  I used an old credit card or scraper tool to smooth out all of the gel medium.  Any gel medium that oozes out (and there will be a lot of it) I smoothed around the edges of the pages to completely seal the three pages together.  Repeat this process for each 3-page-set, placing a piece of waxed paper in between each block so the blocks don't stick together.  (But even if they do stick together, ripping them apart can yield a cool result too!).

4. The next step is to "cure" the gel medium so your pages will be ready to work on.  The journal above cured for an entire YEAR and yielded sturdy, crunchy pages.  I've prepared a new journal to work on when I'm finished with my current one, and it's been curing for a couple of weeks now.  I'm going to let it cure a bit longer.  This is a personal preference.  Working on the pages before they are completely dry will yield a different result.  But the beauty of this journal is its imperfection.  I love the instant grunge factor this process yields.

5. Once the journal has cured to your preference, you can start working!  I put just the merest bit of gesso (with light strokes) on the pages to prep them for all the stuff I'm going to throw at them, but again, this is my preference.

Let me know if you have any questions.  If you give this a try, let me know how you like it!

Happy journaling!

Blue and Orange Kind of Day

Blue Orange Box w/Handle
Originally uploaded by Jeannine P..

Today has been a mixed bag.

First, the splendid and delightful ...

I received a box from my partner in the Blue/Orange swap I hosted through swap-bot. Melissa sent this **gorgeous** little box filled with treasures and papers and lovely handmade items! It was truly a sight to behold and brought many giggles and smiles. It was really difficult to stop and take photos of everything. :)

If you weren't able to join in our color swap this go around, I hope you'll join us for a future swap. This is such an inspiring and fun activity on both the giving and receiving ends of things.

We still do not know anything solid about Mr. P.'s work situation. Mr. P, you may or may not know, is a Marine and this job change came out of nowhere. Blindsided might describe what is happening, but only just. We are readying for the worst, but hoping for the best. The worst case scenario involves a very long separation (so long, I can't bear to write it out). He won't necessarily go to a scary place, but he might. Either way, he won't be here and he will be very far away from home.

There is still much that is unresolved and so there is hope. "When nothing is sure, anything is possible", says author Margaret Drabble. This is a comforting thought.

Emily Dickinson wrote about "hope being that thing with feathers"; I had no idea it weighed so much or could pierce so sharply.

It's a weird time, for sure.

(Journal page)