In the art building today I started collaging the inside of my artist book. I did this by ripping up pages of a magazine and overlapping them kind of in a haphazard pattern. I think a lot of my book is going to rely on the idea of color and how it can create different meaning, as right now my book is very brightly colored, but I don’t necessarily see this being the way it stays. I feel comfortable with where my artist book is at right now, as I am further along than I was when I had to do this assignment for creative writing. I fully had my last artist book rely on hand written aspects, but I think my plan this time around is using little to no hand written words at all, I think it will give it a different feel than last years, and that is what I am currently striving for.
The art studio time last Friday was helpful for me in starting to see the final vision for my artist’s book – I was able to grab some images and make mental notes of what kind of art I envision working with my poems and the theme of nature, time, growing, reflection, etc. I am thinking almost of this aesthetic feeling of recognizing beauty through the means of yourself; my experiences and reflections bring way to this concept of human existence and pay homage to the natural world through the creative art of language as poetry. After looking at my book and how I want to set it up spatially, I think two poems will work well, so with this revision process in the next week or two, I will focus on selecting the two that fit the vision best. I have the goal of having a title page with one very expressive collage/painting element and then a very simple weaving image or color scheme weaving through the rest of the pages with the two poems in between. The next steps for me would be to find more images to work with for the collage page, find meaningful pieces of images/words to add, and then put some color on the pages before I place the poems.
I was very excited to finally get into the art studio and create my book. I’m happy that I finally have a physical book to start playing around with and adding things to. I’m also happy that I waited so long to build it as I now know what poem is going to be put into it which gave me all sorts of ideas for how to decorate it while I was working on it. I’m thinking of using a lot of color to try to reinforce the ideas I bring forth in the poem. I’m not sure if I want to add anything else to the book and I have the title page and back page which I’m not sure what to do with. I’m not sure if I want to make the first one a traditional title page or if I want to just make it another color page so that when the book is open the poem is surrounded by color. I talk about the night sky in one stanza which is where I got this idea for the color to be around the stanza. I wanted to surround this specific stanza with black with little stars in it. I was thinking about painting that page with acrylic paint but I think that might be too much. I have a few friends that know the art building well and go there on weekends to work on projects so I might join them so that I can continue adding to my book. Otherwise I’m not sure how I’d be able to continue creating in it the way I want to.
I was happy to be back into the art studio, especially since I have a very tangible, physical aspect to my project. I decided to focus on the letter that involved the most physical work— the first poem in my artist book— as I plan on staining the page to fit the darker aspects of the poem. I also have selected dates for each poem, the most important of which is that of the first poem, as it falls on a holiday, Christmas Eve, a time typically associated with joy, and I picked the year 2017 for personal reasons. I tried to find magazine clippings for that month, and I succeeded, including finding one about a celebrity couple that taken, out of context, works perfectly for the relationship between the two characters of my poem. I plan on incorporating photography and physical objects into my project through the envelopes to help create that personalized, tangible feeling to it as I continue.
Being able to go back to the art building and that creative space was really relaxing. It is a stressful time during the year and although I have the basis of my artists book, I mainly just started designed the inside of the first poem. I am trying to decide whether I want to add another poem or not that would hopefully make sense to others with my theme of butterflies. I think the overall experience was nice, everyone being able to create their own images and make ideas come to life and I just really enjoyed that. I appreciate the advice, comments, and help that is there too. I am hoping to add another poem that may have something to do with letting go, the first poem in my book is the physical feeling of butterflies but in more of a painful way. It explains “butterflies” without saying it when you like someone. I want my other poem to maybe go off of that and if not, I would like to take one of the poems I have already written like “The Same Sky” and add it in. I am not disappointed with the process so far.
My time in the art studio was a little uneasy, but turned out quite positive. I arrived with my materials from the last session with still little of a plan to go forward with. I was not sure what poems I wanted to use and therefore, what decorative papers/number of pages I wanted to use. Since I had a big pile of different decorative papers I decided to just put most of them back and stick with one pattern to create some simplicity in both the artists book and in my process. I decided on a neutral decorative paper for breathing space within the book. I felt unready to actually bind the book, but eventually twiddled my thumbs long enough that I decided I just needed to jump into it. This is very typical of me–overthinking and making no moves, and eventually needing to just give myself a push. Professor Gorham gave me a good piece of advice saying that if I start creating it, the rest of the ideas will shape along with the book. I realized that it was okay to just start creating even if the plan was not clear, the rest would come along. So I binded the book and it feels like a great relief. I am also super proud of it, even though it is an easier process than I had originally thought, because I am continuing to step out of my comfort zone. Going forward, I was thinking about having a few poems in the book, but am now wondering about the possibility of having only one and what that might do for me and the book. That is the next step in this process, deciding what poem or poems will comprise the content. Following that will be deciding how to show that content across the pages of the book.
When I was in the Art studio building I found that instead of feeling hindered about missing the previous visit or overwhelmed, instead I felt inspired and I really got to know my peers as well. I’m appreciative of the opportunity and I’m so glad that I got to experience such creativity when I got in there to work. I learned of all the different tools and materials I could use like the newspapers and the different kinds of fabrics and papers, and when I looked around everyone seemed to really know what they were doing with their project which made me feel safe as I found what I wanted to do. Next time all I need to do is print my project and cut some paper.
In the art building today I focused on how I could further the idea of concept or “look” for my artist book. My original concept focused on family, identity, and nostalgia but I didn’t have an exact direction to go with it. After spending time and analyzing the materials I have, I’ve chosen to focus on how I could make collages that allude to ideas of family or identity. The one I am working with right now is a collage of all younger females with the center being a split image of myself. That way, when that page of the artist book is opened, it looks like the poem is split between the two halves of myself— alluding to it being part of me. I intend to then do similar moves with the rest of artist book so both the formatting and the work itself build on one another. Outside of the images for my artist book, I also decided to move forward with newspaper type-font for my poems. I think this adds to the identity portion of concept because of things I self-identify with (and this book of work is my own authorship). Looking forward to putting all the moving parts together!
This session working on my artist book I feel like I opened up a whole lot of possible ideas to think about. Last time I was compiling the poems I wanted to use and planning out the color scheme, but when I started painting my first pages today I wanted to change the whole project around. I think instead of focusing the book on a broad range of emotions, I may include just poems about different kinds of love (mostly romantic love though). The first 2 pages I created consisted of 3 shades of pink, with stenciled on dark pink flowers. I loved both pages so much that I wanted to change my whole artist book to focus on love which I was quite shocked by. With the next pages I want to use even more shades of pinks and get into the reds and dark reds. I’m thinking I may want to arrange the pages in a gradient as you go through the book. Now that I have changed the theme of the book, I have to write some extra poems or find some that I have already written to include in my artist book to follow the theme. I am really excited to see what I do next with my book!
Our second visit to the art studio went very well. I was certainly more productive than the first time we went to that building. Since nothing out of the ordinary came out of this experience, I plan to describe the things that I did.
First off, I arrived at the art studio about an hour and twenty minutes before class to sketch some ideas out on some scrap pieces of paper. After doing this for about twenty to thirty minutes, Professor Gorham showed up and helped me brainstorm the rest of the design for my artist book, which I later modified. The rest of the time was pretty much devoted to drawing the illustration that I came up with for the cover. The drawing was a play on a heart rate monitor’s graph as a mountain range (if you see the front and back covers this will make much more sense).
As far as the inside goes, I decided that I wanted to have one continuous drawing throughout the whole book. This illustration would be something that changes as the pages progress, like the example of the apple tree that I looked at from a past student’s booklet. However, now that I have mountains as the cover, I am not sure what this drawing is going to look like. There’s a strong possibility of the mountains continuing through the book, their ranges getting smaller and smaller as it transitions into the back cover with only one mountain left.
I will be including only one poem in the artist book and I have not yet decided which poem that will be.
Like I said in my last comment, having those images, poems, and ideas locked down really gave me a confident perspective on how I want to approach the final stages of my art book. An old rugged and personal feel is what I want the reader to understand and hopefully relate to one way or another. I also brought back some paper from home that I think will complete the look of the book as well. Old rugged paper is the look I want and I think I will be able to achieve that. Assigning each poem their personal image was crucial to getting this idea down. In terms of order, I am not sure where each poem will lie but I think happy to heavy is probs the vibe to go into, in order to set the reader down gently.
I don’t really have much in the way of progress for this one. I’m still working on lining it, and technically I just made it at the time this journal was released, the last two were written late. I still have the lining to do, and the cover is finished, I just have to line the pages (as I said) and finish up the poems I want in the journal. I think I may or may not have added a few too many pages, but I have no doubt I’ll be able to finish up some by the time the project is due, it’s just a matter of buckling down and finishing what I have left. I do want the idea of high school life and coming-of-age-style progression to permeate the book, and I plan to do that with the writing in what will most likely be a simple black pen, coupled with various marker drawings on the pages and stickers.
12 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 13”
In the art building today I started collaging the inside of my artist book. I did this by ripping up pages of a magazine and overlapping them kind of in a haphazard pattern. I think a lot of my book is going to rely on the idea of color and how it can create different meaning, as right now my book is very brightly colored, but I don’t necessarily see this being the way it stays. I feel comfortable with where my artist book is at right now, as I am further along than I was when I had to do this assignment for creative writing. I fully had my last artist book rely on hand written aspects, but I think my plan this time around is using little to no hand written words at all, I think it will give it a different feel than last years, and that is what I am currently striving for.
The art studio time last Friday was helpful for me in starting to see the final vision for my artist’s book – I was able to grab some images and make mental notes of what kind of art I envision working with my poems and the theme of nature, time, growing, reflection, etc. I am thinking almost of this aesthetic feeling of recognizing beauty through the means of yourself; my experiences and reflections bring way to this concept of human existence and pay homage to the natural world through the creative art of language as poetry. After looking at my book and how I want to set it up spatially, I think two poems will work well, so with this revision process in the next week or two, I will focus on selecting the two that fit the vision best. I have the goal of having a title page with one very expressive collage/painting element and then a very simple weaving image or color scheme weaving through the rest of the pages with the two poems in between. The next steps for me would be to find more images to work with for the collage page, find meaningful pieces of images/words to add, and then put some color on the pages before I place the poems.
I was very excited to finally get into the art studio and create my book. I’m happy that I finally have a physical book to start playing around with and adding things to. I’m also happy that I waited so long to build it as I now know what poem is going to be put into it which gave me all sorts of ideas for how to decorate it while I was working on it. I’m thinking of using a lot of color to try to reinforce the ideas I bring forth in the poem. I’m not sure if I want to add anything else to the book and I have the title page and back page which I’m not sure what to do with. I’m not sure if I want to make the first one a traditional title page or if I want to just make it another color page so that when the book is open the poem is surrounded by color. I talk about the night sky in one stanza which is where I got this idea for the color to be around the stanza. I wanted to surround this specific stanza with black with little stars in it. I was thinking about painting that page with acrylic paint but I think that might be too much. I have a few friends that know the art building well and go there on weekends to work on projects so I might join them so that I can continue adding to my book. Otherwise I’m not sure how I’d be able to continue creating in it the way I want to.
I was happy to be back into the art studio, especially since I have a very tangible, physical aspect to my project. I decided to focus on the letter that involved the most physical work— the first poem in my artist book— as I plan on staining the page to fit the darker aspects of the poem. I also have selected dates for each poem, the most important of which is that of the first poem, as it falls on a holiday, Christmas Eve, a time typically associated with joy, and I picked the year 2017 for personal reasons. I tried to find magazine clippings for that month, and I succeeded, including finding one about a celebrity couple that taken, out of context, works perfectly for the relationship between the two characters of my poem. I plan on incorporating photography and physical objects into my project through the envelopes to help create that personalized, tangible feeling to it as I continue.
Being able to go back to the art building and that creative space was really relaxing. It is a stressful time during the year and although I have the basis of my artists book, I mainly just started designed the inside of the first poem. I am trying to decide whether I want to add another poem or not that would hopefully make sense to others with my theme of butterflies. I think the overall experience was nice, everyone being able to create their own images and make ideas come to life and I just really enjoyed that. I appreciate the advice, comments, and help that is there too. I am hoping to add another poem that may have something to do with letting go, the first poem in my book is the physical feeling of butterflies but in more of a painful way. It explains “butterflies” without saying it when you like someone. I want my other poem to maybe go off of that and if not, I would like to take one of the poems I have already written like “The Same Sky” and add it in. I am not disappointed with the process so far.
My time in the art studio was a little uneasy, but turned out quite positive. I arrived with my materials from the last session with still little of a plan to go forward with. I was not sure what poems I wanted to use and therefore, what decorative papers/number of pages I wanted to use. Since I had a big pile of different decorative papers I decided to just put most of them back and stick with one pattern to create some simplicity in both the artists book and in my process. I decided on a neutral decorative paper for breathing space within the book. I felt unready to actually bind the book, but eventually twiddled my thumbs long enough that I decided I just needed to jump into it. This is very typical of me–overthinking and making no moves, and eventually needing to just give myself a push. Professor Gorham gave me a good piece of advice saying that if I start creating it, the rest of the ideas will shape along with the book. I realized that it was okay to just start creating even if the plan was not clear, the rest would come along. So I binded the book and it feels like a great relief. I am also super proud of it, even though it is an easier process than I had originally thought, because I am continuing to step out of my comfort zone. Going forward, I was thinking about having a few poems in the book, but am now wondering about the possibility of having only one and what that might do for me and the book. That is the next step in this process, deciding what poem or poems will comprise the content. Following that will be deciding how to show that content across the pages of the book.
When I was in the Art studio building I found that instead of feeling hindered about missing the previous visit or overwhelmed, instead I felt inspired and I really got to know my peers as well. I’m appreciative of the opportunity and I’m so glad that I got to experience such creativity when I got in there to work. I learned of all the different tools and materials I could use like the newspapers and the different kinds of fabrics and papers, and when I looked around everyone seemed to really know what they were doing with their project which made me feel safe as I found what I wanted to do. Next time all I need to do is print my project and cut some paper.
In the art building today I focused on how I could further the idea of concept or “look” for my artist book. My original concept focused on family, identity, and nostalgia but I didn’t have an exact direction to go with it. After spending time and analyzing the materials I have, I’ve chosen to focus on how I could make collages that allude to ideas of family or identity. The one I am working with right now is a collage of all younger females with the center being a split image of myself. That way, when that page of the artist book is opened, it looks like the poem is split between the two halves of myself— alluding to it being part of me. I intend to then do similar moves with the rest of artist book so both the formatting and the work itself build on one another. Outside of the images for my artist book, I also decided to move forward with newspaper type-font for my poems. I think this adds to the identity portion of concept because of things I self-identify with (and this book of work is my own authorship). Looking forward to putting all the moving parts together!
This session working on my artist book I feel like I opened up a whole lot of possible ideas to think about. Last time I was compiling the poems I wanted to use and planning out the color scheme, but when I started painting my first pages today I wanted to change the whole project around. I think instead of focusing the book on a broad range of emotions, I may include just poems about different kinds of love (mostly romantic love though). The first 2 pages I created consisted of 3 shades of pink, with stenciled on dark pink flowers. I loved both pages so much that I wanted to change my whole artist book to focus on love which I was quite shocked by. With the next pages I want to use even more shades of pinks and get into the reds and dark reds. I’m thinking I may want to arrange the pages in a gradient as you go through the book. Now that I have changed the theme of the book, I have to write some extra poems or find some that I have already written to include in my artist book to follow the theme. I am really excited to see what I do next with my book!
Our second visit to the art studio went very well. I was certainly more productive than the first time we went to that building. Since nothing out of the ordinary came out of this experience, I plan to describe the things that I did.
First off, I arrived at the art studio about an hour and twenty minutes before class to sketch some ideas out on some scrap pieces of paper. After doing this for about twenty to thirty minutes, Professor Gorham showed up and helped me brainstorm the rest of the design for my artist book, which I later modified. The rest of the time was pretty much devoted to drawing the illustration that I came up with for the cover. The drawing was a play on a heart rate monitor’s graph as a mountain range (if you see the front and back covers this will make much more sense).
As far as the inside goes, I decided that I wanted to have one continuous drawing throughout the whole book. This illustration would be something that changes as the pages progress, like the example of the apple tree that I looked at from a past student’s booklet. However, now that I have mountains as the cover, I am not sure what this drawing is going to look like. There’s a strong possibility of the mountains continuing through the book, their ranges getting smaller and smaller as it transitions into the back cover with only one mountain left.
I will be including only one poem in the artist book and I have not yet decided which poem that will be.
Like I said in my last comment, having those images, poems, and ideas locked down really gave me a confident perspective on how I want to approach the final stages of my art book. An old rugged and personal feel is what I want the reader to understand and hopefully relate to one way or another. I also brought back some paper from home that I think will complete the look of the book as well. Old rugged paper is the look I want and I think I will be able to achieve that. Assigning each poem their personal image was crucial to getting this idea down. In terms of order, I am not sure where each poem will lie but I think happy to heavy is probs the vibe to go into, in order to set the reader down gently.
I don’t really have much in the way of progress for this one. I’m still working on lining it, and technically I just made it at the time this journal was released, the last two were written late. I still have the lining to do, and the cover is finished, I just have to line the pages (as I said) and finish up the poems I want in the journal. I think I may or may not have added a few too many pages, but I have no doubt I’ll be able to finish up some by the time the project is due, it’s just a matter of buckling down and finishing what I have left. I do want the idea of high school life and coming-of-age-style progression to permeate the book, and I plan to do that with the writing in what will most likely be a simple black pen, coupled with various marker drawings on the pages and stickers.