Welcome! First Grade, 1956 |
First
let me just say: Recognition is nice. |
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These include:
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Beginnings | |
My art has grown out of childhood daydreaming. |
Doodling, scrap booking before scrap booking was commercialized, making instead of buying presents, and journaling. |
In one of my first diaries I wisely wrote: "When I first had a Diary I thought you were supos [sic] to write down every thing you did. Now I know that you write down what you want to." This followed the several entries in my first Diary that stated: "I don't know." |
Here are some of my older journals. |
But there are many more. I journal daily. It's like flossing my teeth, I tell people. If I don't do it, I feel something is not quite right with my day. |
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Journaling
to Journals |
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My interest in book art arose simply from a need for more journals for myself; I had run through my favorites from bookstores and Target. I began by decorating the outsides of notebooks with things I couldn't quite throw away—old postage stamps, badges from my dad's postal uniform, beads and bits of ribbon and lace, and all sorts of found objects. |
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I progressed to
gutting discarded books with titles that struck me—The
Ruined City, Death's Old Sweet Song, Needful
Things—filling them with blank pages, and
embellishing the covers. These
two journals came into being before I knew much
about binding and was making up the construction
process as I went.
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Sometimes I cut away parts of the cover or sections of pages making a "hole" in the journal. Then I could glue in a 3-dimensional item or a picture that I wanted to see for several pages while I wrote. | |
Eventually I made books also out of other recycled materials such as pieces of fabric, upholstery and wallpaper samples, handkerchiefs, diskettes, CDs, old photographs, and birch bark. | |
And
Then
There's Art Journaling |
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In addition
to writing in a journal every day, I also often explore
and reflect with visual journaling. Usually I
address things that are on my mind at the time, for
instance aging and childhood viewed from the vantage
point of age. |
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Through
a Pandemic |
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I have found
written journaling and visual journaling particularly
helpful in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is a page from the first few days when I felt as if
a whirlwind, sometimes as powerful as a bomb, was
bursting into my life. |
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When
feelings of frustration, anger, and fear were getting
the better of me, I slapped down some red paint and went
at it with a black marker and images and words that I
found in catalogs and books and that I drew or wrote. |
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But
sometimes too I art journaled when I was at peace.
This spread resulted from paging through a couple of
magazines and lifting images and phrases that stood out
for me at the time. I was amazed, in fact, at the
positive feelings that emerged. |
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And this
spread reflects my feelings quite recently (November,
2020) of living in isolation for the most part--in other
words, in my own little bubbles. |