Photography Play

I have an old (circa 2005) point-and-shoot Canon Powershot, but I've found that my iPhone 3 actually takes better pictures sometimes!  One advantage of the Powershot is the macro mode that allows easy focused close-ups.  I played with the two cameras to make this little series of pictures that explore texture and pattern over a landscape.

Another Face

I've re-faced another composition book for the purpose of taking notes when I'm stuck in the house and heated political discussions are sparked.  I normally get very flustered over anything on television, news coverage (as poor as it is in general), and politics (all of it, all sides).  I've decided that having a journal in the house, since I'm now sharing a common home with others and can't control my exposure to any of the aforementioned elements, specifically for writing down my frustrated blurts, questions, and worries will help me deal with the anxiety.

So here's my collage cover:

Thoughts and Pictures

Whew!  It has been a while since I've been here!

In my recent move I lost my office and visual journaling workspace.  In fact, I'm squeezed into my own private bedroom, with a single bed, books stuffed everywhere they'll fit, shared clothing space, and all the benefits, but also drawbacks, of a communal living space outside the room.  Otherwise known as: living with your parents.

For the next year, prior to heading off for another graduate degree, I'll be living here and studying philosophy and religion as a foundation for the advanced degree.  I'm still working on my visual journaling, though!  And I've created a second blog!

I Seek the Greening
http://seekthegreening.blogspot.com/

This summer I'm revisiting Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, which I discuss in the Synchronicity entry on the other blog.  Here is the cover I collaged for the companion journal I'm using:

I'm also posting photographs to a new account I've created on the 365 Photo Project:

http://365project.org/kbryson/365

Busy, busy bee!  

Graffiti--Knitter Style

I've seen pictures of knitted graffiti in recent years, usually in the form of knitted sleeves attached to urban trees limbs or statues.  But this article and the related photo gallery in the New York Times shows what can really be done with imagination, string, and two sticks.  Oh, and a team of graffiti-hitmen/women.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/fashion/creating-graffiti-with-yarn.html?ref=fashion

Art-Is-Try

Absolutely gorgeous blog from a real artist who also shares her visual journaling pages.

http://art-is-try-artistry.blogspot.com/

She also has beautiful, hand-made books that would make the perfect take-along visual journal...they may be available for purchase, but I would recommend contacting the blogging artist herself.

Joanna Neborsky

http://www.joannaneborsky.com/Projects/ThreeLineNovels.html

Fantastic collage and drawings!  Neborsky is the illustrator of this collection of novellas by Félix Fénéon, Illustrated Three-line Novels.

I made a mistake (I think)... NOT at Michael's

The Strathmore Mixed Media visual journaling books must have been at A. C. Moore.  At least, they weren't at the Michael's I visited today...

visual journaling gets some props

I have the word of a far more accomplished and talented visual journalist than I, that the Strathmore Mixed Media journals are the bomb for visual journaling (the art form I celebrate because it doesn't require talents, I realize, but the visual journalist informant in question deserves to be recognized as wayyy-talented).  BUT, the Strathmore Mixed Media journals haven't been readily available in the civilian craft stores.  For many moons they lived in the upper echelons of studio art stores and online supply sources, I believe.  As you can see, our on-the-spot visual reporter has evidence that they are not only now carried in your local Michael's craft store, but also featured on an end-cap with a great-big colorful display sign.  You can even see their size, prices, and other attributes in some of these photos, of which I'm pretty impressed because they were all taken with my iPhone, Irene.

one earth mama, one earth papa...Michael Franti

These are pictures taken of an interfaith display in the chapel in St. Joseph's Hospital.  A glass case divided into at least six glass shelves holds artifacts held sacred or representing aspects of world religions.  A single folded piece of paper is among the artifacts on each shelf.  On each paper is written a quote from that religion's Holy Book or a piece of their sacred oral belief system.  Each quote communicates the same message.

a stylish lady...

I value personal style over high fashion, but this book featured in the New York Times Style section captured my imagination with its collaged illustartions:

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/fashioning-fiction-camilla-mortons-fairy-tale-memoirs/?ref=style

(There are 5 sample illustrations in the slide show at the top of the article, don't miss those!)

Basically author Camilla Morton mixes a real life fashion designer (Lacroix in the featured memoir) with a fairy tale.

aus Deutschland

beneath this...voila!

The earrings are beautiful, the scarf perfecto, and the dark chocolate is already a wonderful memory (best eaten with good, strong coffee.

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Graphic Collage Biography

Lauren Redniss has captured a fine review from the The New York Times with her new biography of Marie Curie:

Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout
Click on the title above for the Amazon site and scroll down on the page to sample pages.  They are very enticing.

Read The New York Times review by Dwight Garner:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/books/22book.html?ref=books

In the very beginning of the review, Garner does an excellent job of giving an explanation of the fuzzy, tentative status that graphic novels hold in the literary world, and general miasma rest-of-the-world, I guess.

thought for rough days:

Even Sheriff Brody took Dramamine before getting on Quint's boat, the Orca, in "Jaws".

Dear Reader,

I digitally removed his name.  You should be advised that this is where visual journaling gets the "journaling" part.  Generally journals are private and uncensored.  But, being a visual journal, these pages wanted to be seen.

Sincerely,
The Librarian

P.S. Click to enlarge.

excerpt of the day:

As if by the very suggestion, she found her eyes dragged away from the river and up to the left of the porch, where the last hill before town blotted out the stars.

"Here," he said. "I hope these'll be all right--"

"Look at the Marsten House," she said.

He did.  There was a light on up there.

--'Salem's Lot by Stephen King (Ch. 2, end section 6)

song lyric of the day:

'Cause every bit of land is a holy land
And every drop of water is a holy water
And every single child is a son or a daughter
Of the one earth mama, and the one earth papa
...
You say you're a Christian 'cause God made you
You say you're a Muslim 'cause God made you
You say you're a Hindu and the next man a Jew
And we all kill each other 'cause God told us to?  Nah!

-from "Hello, Bonjour!", Michael Franti.

Possibly the best hymn or holiday song ever written.  Good to dance to, too.

song lyric of the day:

So you are a superstar
Get off the cross
We need the wood

-Tori Amos "Big Wheel"

dedication

When I happened upon this book (read about the project here:  http://www.1000journals.com/):

I knew I had to take it home when I read this dedication: 

Then, this week, I met someone who had also (co)wrote a book essentially dedicated to those same people (like me) and to helping them recognize their creativity and embrace it, set it free, play with it like a good friend.  I watched him demonstrate techniques on using watercolor colored pencils to a group of students in a guest-artist workshop made possible by an excellent and hard-working middle-school art teacher.  He also brought lots of his own visual journals for us to see and browse.  The guest-artist was Eric Scott (on the right, below):

These are the authors of The Journal Junkies Workshop, which is an excellent beginner's guide to visual journaling.  

I had actually misunderstood how to use the watercolor pencils (when I had tried to learn on my own), so Eric's demonstration was reinforced by technique instructions in the book:

The book's table of contents gives you the sense of fun they took into organizing the techniques and equipment suggestions:

I love the book and had an extra surprise in discovering a new direction of research and reading in the book's own dedication.  This one is dedicated to Dan Eldon, a man who began his own first visual journal as a young boy in Africa and continued the practice throughout his life...right up until his death at age 22 while on a photojournalism investigation in Somalia.  Intrigued?  Indeed.  Here's the site about his life and work, but also the titles of the books that sampled from his many journals:

http://www.daneldon.org

http://www.creativevisions.org/shop/books2.html

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hat heads

I like hats.  Especially cloches and anything with feathers.  Of course, those kinds of hats don't have much of a place in the normal American middl-ish-class life I have.  I certainly don't attend horse races.

But hats like that don't like to hide in closets, so I really really want some nice vintage milliner heads for displaying them, maybe some glass forms, and so forth.  Well, that's not happening.

I decided to make my own.  I began with the idea of using a clear plastic form, on which my black cloche for the Dorothy Parker costume was shipped, as a form for building up a whole head.  But I'm new to paper mache and it soon became clear that a whole head might be a leap for a beginner.

Then, while on safari in A.C. Moore, I happened to look up on a top shelf and espy a topiary form that my mind's eye immediately transformed into the perfect beginnings of a hat holder!

And so begins a new adventure:

This is one (above) with layers of paper mache put down first.  

Here, I've applied gesso to the first one, on top of the paper mache layers.  You can see what the foam looks like prior to any work.  

I used a basic finger nail file / emory board to smooth off the seams and rough spots of the green ball and gessoed this one without the paper mache layers.  (I was out of sandpaper and I thought using the palm sander would be overkill.)

I plan on making faces on them akin to the vintage millinery heads used centuries ago.  This is one of my favorites, which is actually a contemporary piece modeled on the style of those made in the 1800s:

 I found one (not this one) from an online auction with an expected price over $1500!

building a cat from scratch

Stop laughing.  That glob will be a cat head.

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