When I began teaching my Extreme Visual Journaling workshops, I tried to develop a format where everyone would feel like a success. And I wanted everyone, no matter what their experience or talent, advanced or beginner, to be on equal footing. For a long time my focus was on expression because that is what I teach. But as my students began to develop their own work, I felt lacking in my personal artistic imagery. I have worked for the last few years to rectify this. I made an attempt to have my Visual Journals be a reflection not only of my psychological process, but to allow them to be an integrated expression of my full self, including my artist. In my artwork, there is no distinction between my personal expression and my artistic expression: they are one and the same. But in my journals, because my focus was deep emotional probing, their pages were not always artful. And because I was not doing my own artwork, my artistry suffered. My experience last year at Journalfest was a real awakening of my artist soul. This has prompted me to develop the following workshop:
In the Artist’s Journal workshop, we will focus on making artistically satisfying pages, while still combining text with images in a book or journal format. We will learn how to create layers and textures. We will use my same methods for storytelling but allow our personal expression and process more time in order to fully develop our imagery. We will still uncover personal symbols from the unconscious, but we will be interested in incorporating them into our Visual Journal page in a way that makes sense artistically. In the “Artist’s Journal,” we will ask ourselves questions about the nature of our artwork and expression, we will investigate what we truly want to do with our art, and even muse over possibilities for a series. In this workshop we strive for joy, fulfillment, achievement, and the supreme heart’s ease that comes from artistic expression. The visual journal is truly an artist’s playground, but in this workshop our play comes from pushing our imagery to the other side, not just stopping when we get the information from the unconscious. This time, we go all the way to find out who we are as artists and what we need to say.
Supply List:
- Please bring your favorite art materials
- Book /Journal ( see my website for more info on choosing a book)
- Gluesticks ( 2 big ones - don‘t bother with the little ones) or your favorite glue
- scissors
- Acrylic paints: at least one light, one dark.
- brushes in a few different thicknesses
- 1 quarter inch brush ( relative good quality - no frayed edges or wispys.)
- writing pen ( nothin’ fancy)
- 2 different masking tapes in different colors/thicknesses (you may want some transparent tape, but not necessary)
- Wet Ones brand wipes ( or any other wipe with alcohol or other toxic cleaner- get a small package or get the big jug and share with your friends!)
- collage items: random collage items. Bring some shiny papers like stickers, magazine pages or photos. Bring some dry absorbant papers. Some of you collage items you need to be willing to totally lose and obliterate, but please bring some that you will use that we will not destroy. Feel free to bring items like press on type of image trasnfers. This is your workshop, bring what you need.
- Each student will be required to bring a “Mystery Bag”. A plastic grocery bag or smaller will do. Some suggestions are collage items, an old paintbrush that is all glued together, that orange paint you hate, stickers from when you were 14, Artist tools and supplies you no longer use or never liked, torn up pieces of your artwork that didn’t work out (no recognizable artwork, please) books to cut up, magazines, sticks, markers, 2 inch chewed up pencils, you get the picture-sort of a grab bag. What, and how much to bring, is up to you. We all ready have our own nice supplies-we want your cast offs to really make us think!
Optional:
Optional items are things I recommend, but are not necessary, if you prefer something else, bring it!
- 1 china marker or grease pencil any color or 1 watercolor crayon in any color
- rubberstamp letters ( any size) & stamp pad
- A few markers; brush markers in any color, a black permanent marker
- 1 white poster paint marker ( or other tool that can write on dark surfaces)
- 1 regular graphite pencil, 6B, ebony pencil, graphite stick
- a coupla colored pencils, any color
A Little About ME
I developed a solid foundation for my artistic expression by receiving my BFA from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. My path as an exhibiting artist has brought me awards and grants. Based on my artistic expression, I developed Extreme Journalism as a tool for healing and self dialogue in 1992 for the Epilepsy Society, and I have taught and refined my pioneering and self enchanting process that combines journal writing with art making in the safe container of a book ever since…
