My Sketchbook Project - In The Beginning...

The Sketchbook Project has begun.The top photo is of the two printing plates I made from cork to print the cover of my sketchbook. My theme is "forks and spoons;" I guess it's pretty obvious by my cover design. I'll probably add more to it later.

The first page highlights "hunger" as a sub-theme, relating to forks and spoons. Miller inherited a ton of old Life and Look magazines from his mother. The photo of the children looking at the pancakes is from a 1963 Life magazine.

American Gothic, by Grant Wood, is the most parodied painting in the world, so I decided to add my fork and spoon rendition.

My Journaling Weekend

What a great weekend! Despite the cold, torrential downpours, Boone was a great place to be for me and 12 others at the Journal Junkies Art Journal Workshop. Our leader, teacher, inspirer, was David Modler, one of the authors of The Journal Junkies Workshop, an incredible book, that's almost sensory overload, about creating art journals. With his patient, quiet manner, David led us through creating backgrounds for our art journals, some transfer techniques and an unusual insight into symbology. It was two days of painting, stenciling, taping, drawing, laughing, and eating.

For me, it was a great chance to meet other people who save as much bits of  paper, articles, old maps, magazine pictures, receipts, and other ephemera as I do. I've posted a couple of my journal pages for you to see. 

I've always had a lifelong love of notebooks and sketchbooks. I have two small ones I carry in my purse because I never know when I want to jot down a phone number, website, or make a quick sketch of something I might want to remember later. Whenever I see particulary pretty notebooks or journals on sale, I get one to use later on. I'm not a real journal writer in the true sense of the word. I don't sit down every day and journal my thoughts and feelings. I tried to do the "Morning Pages" recommended by Julie Cameron in "The Artist's Way," but just couldn't keep it up for more than a month.

But, visual journals are so much more than writing. The art journal incorporates any kind of visual stimulus to create a story or record of an idea, memory, or situation. It satisfies the writer in me at the same time satisfying the artist.  The best part is there's no right or wrong way to do it. 

I got up this morning and worked on backgrounds for more pages of my journal. I was in the zone for about an hour, before stopping to get ready for work. It's amazing how energized and optimistic I feel now. Art as attitude adjustment...gotta love it.......

The Sketchbook is Here!

So, my husband, Miller, brought up the mail and The Sketchbook has arrived! It came  in a manila envelope and is about 5" x 7", the perfect size for carrying around with me. Inside the envelope is a pamphlet explaining when the completed sketchbook is due, where to send it, and a few tips to make it easy to transport across the country. There are tips like making sure all the pages are dry (to decrease pages sticking together) and advice about not using dangling or potentially harmful elements (librarians have been known to get cut, yikes...)

I open my sketchbook and look at the clean, white pages. It is bound simply, with a cardboard back and cover,which the Project encourages artists to make part of their overall finished product. Ah, the blank, white page...so full of potential, so ready...My mind is already churning ideas around, all I need is time. As a copywriter, I'm used to the blank,white page. There was a time when it was a scary place to be. I would be at my desk, the deadline looming over my head, shortening as each second ticked by. I was under the gun to fill that page with something creative, concise; something the client would like and that would bring in more orders, more sales, for his company. I learned how to generate ideas quick.How to write fast. And short.

But the blank,white page of this sketchbook is more like an invitation. It only requires that I show up and add my own special input. I only have to please myself. To that end I have decided not to take my theme as simply a jumping off point. I have decided to use the theme of  "Forks and Spoons" as a personal journey examining hunger. Who's going to bed hungry here in my own town, my county, my state, my country, my nation, my world. We all hunger for something more than food. I want to look into this, too, and create each page as a mini poster of what I discover. Big job for such a small sketch book. But,I think it can handle it.

The Zone

There is a place I go where time seems to stand still and my logical, left brain is silenced, giving my right brain free rein to gallop, skip,or stroll through its musings without fear of criticism. I get there not by meditation or yoga, not by taking drugs or drinking. I get there by creating art. Whether I'm drawing, painting, creating a collage,cutting and pasting,or carving a cork board that will become a print, the moment I begin to create, I am transformed to the most remarkable place. I call it The Zone.

I have known about The Zone since I was ten-years old and picked up a paint brush for the very first time. I was outside, in our backyard. My father had given me a canvas, some paint and brushes. My subject, a bunch of daisies. And with the first brush stroke I was taken out of the backyard and into a blue-green canvas of concentration. With every white petal and yellow center of those flowers I was absorbed into a place I knew I wanted to be. With the last brush stroke, I realized the sun was gone and I was fast-forwarded to dusk.

The Zone is a healing place. A place of escape. I come back from The Zone refreshed,energized.  It's the main reason I make art. And I've been making art in one form or another for over forty years.  I named this blog Time Suspended because I want to take you with me to The Zone through the art projects I will be working on this summer. Life can be pretty tough, I know. But, creating art gives me respite. 

To get started with the blog, I have signed up for the Sketchbook Project 2012. It is through www.arthousecoop.com and is open to anyone. It is a traveling exhibit of sketchbooks through the Brooklyn Museum of Art. You send them $20 and they send you a sketchbook.You select a theme (or they can give you one) and use that theme as a point of departure for the artwork you will put in the sketchbook.They give you a deadline for sending in the sketchbook,which will then be put with the other sketchbooks and taken on a tour around the US and Canada. At the end of the tour,the sketchbooks are put in the Brooklyn Art Museum library.This is not a juried exhibit, so you are sure to get in...could be a pretty good entry in your resume. The only catch is you do not get the sketchbook back. My theme is "Forks and Spoons." Should be interesting... I plan to post my sketchbook entries on this blog as well as the other artwork I create this summer.  

See you in The Zone....