I don't keep a journal

In the fall of 2008, I was visiting a local art museum with an out of town friend and stumbled upon an exhibit of artist's journals. I'd never seen anything like it and I was riveted. They filled me with yearning and made me physically ache. I'm not sure I even thought in terms of wanting to do something like that myself because it seemed so far out of reach. I wasn't an artist. That Christmas I gave my friend a copy of 1,000 artist journal pages - mostly so that I could look at it before mailing it off to her!

(I've since purchased my own copy.  It's amazing)

Three years later, I make a lot of art, but don't really think of myself as an art journaler because...

I don't keep a journal.  

But I do have THIS book.

It's a cheap weekly planner, kept during the most stressful 3 months of my professional career.

It holds 30 flimsy pages of collage, some drawing, and a few words each day - it's an amazing snapshot of what I was doing, reading, watching, eating and feeling in 2009.  

But I don't keep a journal.

In August of 2009 I got a new job, and life was easier and happier and I stopped writing stuff on that calendar. But in Spring and Summer of 2010 I kept something of an almanac in this little spiral bound notebook. I spent a lot of time working in the yard that summer and I joined a farm share for the first time. I documented everything I planted, and when everything bloomed, and what I got in my weekly share. There were some personal notes thrown in as well, and looking back on it gives me such vivid memories of that time.  

But I don't keep a journal.

Fall came, gardens died, and back-to-school-time got busy. The notebook was forgotten.

But clearly the pull of those artist's sketchbooks hadn't lessened. I bought a flimsy blank journal in April of 2010 and started painting and collaging snapshots of my daily life again. This one coincides with setting up my art room, launching my blog, and getting into a daily art practice. It has almost 50 entries.  

But I don't keep a journal.

Not coincidentally, that book came to an abrupt halt around the time I was doing the Index-Card-A-Day project (June - August, 2011).  

Come September, I remembered my weekly planner from 2009 and bought another. This one is still going strong with daily entries 5 months later.  

But I don't keep a journal.

And then in January, I started watching Natasha and Amy's altered book videos on flutterbye, and made my own altered book for documenting my life.  It started out with daily entries, but that only lasted a week, since I was already keeping daily entries in my calendar.  I'm using it regularly though - sometimes to capture the mood of a week, sometimes to reflect on a single event.  Sometimes I write loads of words, sometimes the images speak for themselves.  If you look closely, you might even call it an art journal.

But....

oh nevermind.

be like the hawk

Painted Love

As you may have guessed from this picture I posted on Sunday, I  love to paint papers. 

A few people asked me about what they are and how I made them.

All the painted pages below are gelatin prints and I posted a little tutorial about it a million years ago.   I used an actual gelatin block that I made with unflavored gelatin, but it seems you can now buy something to simulate it.  You can find my tutorial here. 

The papers hanging on this clothesline are simple paste papers.

Here's how to make them.

In a nutshell, you mix paste with paint, spread it on the paper and make marks.

I bought a carton of Elmer's Art Paste and mixed up the whole box.  (It makes a gallon).  You really don't need much for any painting session, but this stuff seems to keep indefinitely.  I've had the remainder of the gallon sealed in a plastic container for over 2 years and I just used it last week and it was fine.  I mixed a blob of paste with a blob of cheap acrylic.  (maybe 2 parts paint to 1 part paste?  I wing it)

I spread it on cardstock with a brush:

And while the paint is still very wet, used a bunch of different tools (including my fingers) to make marks.

You can use colored paper and paint a different color on top for a 2-color effect:

This one is blue paint on yellow paper:

Here's are a few more examples: 

On this one I painted stripes on the paper before making the marks

 On this one I used a rubber stamp:

 more finger painting:

 So now I have enormous piles of painted papers.  What do I do with them?

Sometimes I use it as a great first layer of an art journal background.

Usually I cut them up and use them in different things.

For a while I was really into creating tiny mosaics.

None of these individual colored pieces are larger than a square inch

I used a bunch on a journal cover a few years ago:

This hangs on my studio wall:

Now I'm more likely to use them as collage elements in mixed media pieces:

I like marbled papers even better than paste papers, but we'll talk about that another day.

Likes me best

I met this guy in 1987.  We were college sophomores, hired by the University to do the same summer job.  Not long after we met, he admitted he had a crush on me.  My response?  "Oh great - that's all I need".  Thankfully he kept hanging around until I came to my senses.  In 1994, as we drove home from a friend's wedding, he said "I guess if you want to get married next summer that's all right with me". 

*swoon*

As you can see, our particular brand of romance is not very mushy-hearts-and-flowers.  

He gave me gum for Valentine's Day.  

It was the perfect gift.

Once, in a conversation about how I knew Ric was THE ONE, I answered, "he drives me less crazy than anyone I know."

It's true.

Plus he plays all the good records and none of the bad ones.

And he makes me laugh and he makes me think and he is never, ever boring.

That first summer, a friend observed "Ric likes Karen best".

25 years later it's still true.

Overhaul

My friend Lynn is cleaning out her basement and attic and gave me some great storage things for my studio.  The problem was there was no way to get them in the studio to start using them without doing a major overhaul of my space.  So I spent the majority of the weekend re-organizing, and very little time actually making art.  And once I start  organizing, it's hard to stop.

Here's what I've been up to:

The major "free thing" is this tower of clear drawers - now filled with nicely organized inks, paints, pens, etc. - all within arms reach of my table and no longer jumbled into huge tubs.  I also moved the file cabinet out of the closet, but more on that later.

The other significant "free thing" is this paper storage shelf.  I know, right?

The addition of these items required a total closet overhaul (even though I'm not keeping them in the closet).  I don't have a "before" picture, but you can visualize precarious piles upon piles.  I took EVERYTHING out of the closet, went out and bought cheap plastic shelving and started putting things back in better order.

I stole this next idea from Lee - I hung one of those fabric sweater racks next to my shelf.  It still needs some work - 2 1/2 of the spaces are filled with bubble wrap.  Might be time to let some of it go...

I had this old rack in the basement - it once hung in the kitchen of an apartment I haven't lived in for a decade, but heaven forbid I throw anything away.  You see?  it came in handy on the inside of the art closet door.

Lynn also gave me this vertical file, which now neatly holds folders full of stencils, my small cutting mat, some plastic mats I use as paint palettes, and other flat things that no longer tip over when I pull one out.

The vertical file sits on my primary shelving unit - which is no longer impossibly jumbled and crammed. (no really, it's not) 

 So here's my happy little workspace:

 The printer/scanner sits on this old coffee table from IKEA that has great storage space below

 The 1000 year old futon attracts visitors, both human and feline, and can be folded down into a bed in the rare event we have a house guest.

 When my sister was visiting in December she installed this wire/clip system along the top of one wall - it's a great place to hang stuff I want to see for a little while.

 She also installed these two little "floating" shelves above the couch. I often use them to prop works in progress so that I can look at them and decide what else they need.  (the face painting just came in the mail from Amy!)

Two boring-but-helpful changes:  mounted the power strip on the wall so I don't keep kicking it:

 Mounted the dustbuster on the wall so that it wasn't taking up premium shelf real estate

This is the ancient bookcase we found by the dumpster when I moved to Seattle in 1992.  It's a total piece of junk, yet I moved it 3000 miles when I came back to Massachusetts in 1998.  It's been sawed in half and bolted back together.  I did paint it once, though you wouldn't know it to look at it.   The black spot in the lower left of the picture is Jake crawling out of bed to say hello.

 Here's the little beast in his favorite spot.

 All of THAT work was done yesterday.  Today, the organization bug wouldn't die.  I tackled the daunting baskets of paper.  I sorted all my collage images into categories and made folders and put them in the file cabinet.  After this picture was taken I alphabetized them!

 FINALLY - I tackled the 3 overflowing baskets of painted papers.  I took over the dining room floor and sorted them by color category.  Jake is laying on the purple pile.

 Then I made hanging folders for each color (and within each file is an envelope-style folder with the small scraps in the same color family.  There were so many they all wouldn't fit in the file cabinet, so here is the overflow in a plastic file box under my table.  (not alphabetized) (yet)

I'm exhausted, but feeling VERY accomplished.

Now somebody stop me before I start alphabetizing my paints...