Art Jornal 8

This is one of my favorites so far. I stained the page and kept the picture of a forming star cluster.
I hand drew the tree with a sharpie and cut the birds out of plain, white paper. The poem is one I wrote after my first husband died. He had been in treatment the year before and was doing well, but died in a freak car  accident. Writing was the one place I could vent my frustration. In real life I had to be mommy and therefore strong and positive.

Journal 7

I have had this poem for years. I always tried to make it longer, make it soften after the initial shock of it's beginning. But here I let it just be. How much more would you want to hear anyway?

The page itself was free association of images. I wanted it simple.I wanted it to be more emotional then what pictorial.

Everything is paper dyed and collaged onto a page of gesso.

Journal 6

Every women can relate to a fairy tale...at least thats what my friend Mamie told me when she was taking a class on the sociology of fairy tales. I thought about it...over bearing father...lots of sisters... the little mermaid of course.

I spent a lot of time on this page. The tail is collaged from individually dyed pieces of paper. I kept the original words in the book and stained the page before drawing over it with sharpie.

This experience is all about not erasing and letting what happens stay on the page stay. It drives me a little crazy but I think I'm better for the experience of going for an image without being able to correct after the fact.

Art Journal day 5

In this entry I colleagued crumpled paper after staining it with ink. I drew and colored in the icon with colored pencils and used fake gold leaf for the crown. I discovered a spelling mistake after I scanned the journal and used gesso to erase and then reprinted the word.

This post is about how we are failed in our life. Those failings can work out and the people we looked up to become closer to us, as they become human in our experience. However is we are failed completely or very young, or if the ones that have the power in our life refuse to step down, the pain can prevent us from being able to trust. Our "gods" have the sacred duty of being our world and then gently and humbly stepping down.

Art Journal Day 4

I used crumbled paper to collage and layer with gesso. I then accented some of the lines and texture with several colors of ink stain. The picture on the left in part of the original illustrations from the astronomy book. Its a photo of the milky way and inspired the writing on the right.

I love to think about the stars, how they are formed and what they've produced. It makes me feel both very small and very connected to the universe. I'm very torn between believing that there is nothing more then then this but then I think about the relativity of time and multiple dimensions and I wonder if there is more...of corse there is...but is a more with meaning? Or just more?

Art Journal Day 3

This entry is from an old poem I wrote many years ago. I had always wanted to create a visual to accompany the poem. I used found objects, ink stain and a sharpie to create this page. I hadn't  preplanned the text arrangement, I just adapted as I went along.

This poem is about being a child in a fundamentalist environment, and realizing at an early age that I was less important then the dogma, and would either be forced to submit or be sacrificed, figuratively, to the cause.

Art Journal Day 2

I used a photograph that I took a couple of years ago as a base. I arranged the text and glued it in place after typing it on to torn paper. I also used a heart stamp and drew a larger version of the heart in the background using a sharpie.

Im tying to not over think the entries and use what I have in front of me to create a complete design in one sitting. I chose the sentiment because I can be too perfectionistic and that prevents me from giving into the creative process. However, I love things that are perfectly imperfect..pealing paint, rusted metal, old wood...they have the beauty of a story written into their surface.

Art Journal 1

This is my first entry into my art journal. I want to attempt to do an art experiment every day using my journal. I bought an old book, glued several pages together and applied gesso. I used fount objects, markers, ink stain and colored pencils. It was daunting to begin the project so I titled "Where do we begin" as a way to confront that fear. This entry is also a throw back to the original title of the 1929 astronomy book called "The Universe Around Us." I liked the idea of using a science book and wanted to keep the idea alive...exploring the universe around us. Art is a different kind of exploration but is informed by the world and our perceptions of it. The patterns on the map, the star charts and the atom are receptions and demonstrate the the "universality" of our reality regardless of size.