love note 10: journaling when words fail
Howdy folks!
I found a place in Vermont finally which is great but that means I'll be moving in less than three weeks! Eep! I hate moving yet I seem to have done it more than the average person. And what to do with all that buzzing anxiety as I try to figure out how to get all my stuff to the other side of the country? Well, return to my roots and journal of course.
Please excuse me if I miss a few weeks, I'll be packing up all the junk I've acquired and driving for 39 hours. I'll be back for sure by the end of June and in such a beautiful new place.
love note 10: journaling when words fail
All of my journals, the earliest from 2005 when I was 10.
My gateway into art was through art journaling. Before I even knew what that meant, I remember so clearly sitting with my journal after pages of just writing and wishing to make it more interesting by adding some illustrations but, even at that tender age of 12 or 13, feeling I couldn't really draw, but in the end made some attempt because oh well no one would see this but me.
Nothing like some self-love. Journal from 2005, age 10
This continued in a "not sure what I'm doing but I need to get all my feelings out" sort of way until college when one of my good friends freshman year showed me their art journal and I got turned onto the art journal community on Tumblr.
For years, the art journal was my only flirtation with visual art. I still maintained I couldn't draw yet filled notebooks with feelings expressed through line and shape. I slowly gained a bit of confidence to share some of them online and the anonymity of it was freeing and comforting to hear that others felt similarly to how I was feeling at the time.
Sketchbooks, David Fullarton
I remember coming across David Fullarton's sketchbooks and journals and truly seeing the art of the sketchbook. His work influenced mine for many years. Similarly to what I talked about last time, I loved the messiness and I loved the wit. And there's something so intimate and vulnerable at being allowed a look into someone's journal or sketchbook.
My journals lately have been sparse with words. So different from my early journals. Maybe it's a fear of spoiling the experiences by trying to fit them clunkily into words or maybe it's just not finding the right ones. Or, most likely, it's just enjoying the few moments of putting pencil to paper without much thought.
Journal spreads from the last couple of days
Similarly, I think I'll leave the words sparse here and instead share some of my favorite artists who gift us glimpses at their journals and sketchbooks.
Spreads from Ines J. @artcreature
readings
poetry nook
from Epigrams: A Journal, #8 by J.V. Cunningham
If wisdom, as it seems it is,
Be the recovery of some bliss
From the conditions of disaster—
Terror the servant, man the master—
It does not follow we should seek
Crises to prove ourselves unweak.
Much of our lives, God knows, is error,
But who will trifle with unrest?
These fools who would solicit terror,
Obsessed with being unobsessed;
Professionals of experience
Who have disasters to withstand them
As if fear never had unmanned them,
Flaunt a presumptuous innocence.
I have preferred indifference.
Currently Reading
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Though I've read M Train, I somehow hadn't read Just Kids yet. Enjoying Patti Smith's writing as always.
find me trying my best on instagram or on my website and pls forward anyone who might enjoy this type of newsletter so i can get one step closer to abandoning social media.
catch you when I'm in Vermont,
k