Eyeballing Goals

It’s been a big week in AngieLand. The long-awaited compilation book by Dawn DeVries Sokol entitled A World of Artist Journal Pages, finally hit the shelves. My copy arrived Friday, and I’ll be spending some quality time with it ASAP. I’m super-stoked to see my work in such great company.

Also this week, the lovely folks at They Draw & Cook featured my Garlic~Rosemary~Parmesan Bread recipe in the jumbotron collection on the home page. I’ve got about 2.5 illustrated recipes in various stages of completion that I really need to get finished and submitted. That’s one of my goals this year—more illustrated recipes and maps for Salli and Nate.

And rounding out my exciting week, this morning I popped in to the Blessing of the Fleet festival to judge the Mt. Pleasant Artist Guild’s show. I chose 8 winners from among 120 pieces, and it was just as difficult/fun as I thought it would be. I think I did well though, and selected a broad range of work.

Pictured: fabric, paper, paint, ink and hand-embroidered thread. I’d like to get back to sewing and do more work like this piece, created more than a year ago. Mostly though I’ve been playing with paper mache, drawing silly pictures of my friends, and wishing I had a kiln.

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Art Journal: Book Release

In celebration of the upcoming release of Dawn Devries Sokol’s A World of Artist Journal Pages, in which my work inhabits pages 168–169, right in the middle of 1000+ images by 230 talented artists from around the world, here is a new page from my art journal. The book is available for pre-order on Amazon, and will be released April 21. Super excited to get my copy.

Behind the Scenes: the Art Journal

Taking a break from drawing cats this week– here are a few pages from my art journal. I’ve been working in this book for a few years now– in its former life it was a paperback volume of love poems in Italian. But now it’s like an archaeological puzzle documenting my body of work– the outtakes, footnotes, and “making of” stories behind my “proper” works.

Whilst making collages the way I do, one creates a large amount of discarded bits, the negative areas cut or torn away and not used. Those pieces are not thrown away– they are carefully horded in stacks and piles on my work table, in case I need them. When the layer of creative flotsam builds up too thick, I get out the art journal book and glue some bits in here and there until my work surface is visible again. Occasionally I’ll  splash in leftover paint and experiment with marks and materials on random pages. It’s like playtime for my soul.

The chronology is a bit wibbly-wobbly though, because I’m just as likely to add to older pages as I am to start something new. Sometimes I can get a rough idea of the time period, because I recognize the bits that came from other, larger works. The pages above were made from leftovers from the NYC Triptych, but the paint went down much earlier.

Other pages incorporate freshly harvested papers, blocks of color torn from magazines, junk mail, etc. I rather enjoy my little art journal. It’s a great place to warm up the creative muscles, experiment with marks and color, and just let loose and play.