Unruly

A friend once described me as a brambly, overgrown sort of woman. I really like that description. I try not to impose rules on my journalling which makes unruliness the order of the day/year/century. This year, especially since last summer, I seem to be feeling more and more chaotic. I have a lot of different journals for different things, from reading journals to my chronological "americas-test-kitchen" free-for-all experimental do whatever I please journals. I like to work within constraints, but I've just (thank you, Ianto) had to slap myself for trying to impose rules on myself again. A few months back I thought of the idea of using bill and junk mail envelopes (especially patterned safety papered windowed ones) for journal pages. I made covers out of used manilla envelopes and used a zutter machine to bind them together. It was a pretty amateurish attempt, the holes are less than perfect and I didn't trim them at all. I've used layers of crackle paint on the cover to make it look like an old cabinet door that had been repainted several times and abused and left out in the rain. Then I started gluing pieces of handbills pulled off of Hawthorne SE and 21st NW wooden power poles, the more weathered, the better. I used Uhu for awhile, but it didn't get magical until I switched to Yes! which added just the right amount of stiffness for pages. I tried to utilize the windows as well. It was looking just raunchy (not a bad start) and then I started adding borders which pulled the open pages together. Some of the borders are wide strips done with Copic markers, some are the computer feed hole strips pulled off of invoices, and whatever else I might come up with. I liked the idea of repurposing the materials. But then the inevitable conflict arose of when to say enough is enough. I got there today. It can't be entirely repurposed material unless I want to alchemically turn something into glue and something else into paint. So, I'm going with the tide on this one and just feeling the direction as it occurs.

I'd considered finishing volume seven (which requires binding) first, but it's just become an arbitrary constraint. So, I've been painting and wiping (Juliana style), and utilizing my collection of nouns in it, getting ready for another layer. I'm not exactly sure what the next layer will be. I ran out of paint halfway through, I could either use another color or get more, but when I started writing in purple Caran d'Ache neopastel, I kept writing even when the painting ran out, and even on pages that didn't have anything glued on them, so it will be interesting to see what happens on pages that get the order reversed.

Mind Full ness

There has been a lot going on in my head lately and I think I will have to break it into categories and do them separately or the sheer length of this post will make it unreadable. Chaos in my head usually whirls together at some point and starts sending darts flying at different targets. Sometimes it all comes back together.

I keep telling myself to collect all of my found objects together in one cigar box and when it is full, create something. So far, I've only been able to remember it. I pass up quite a few things when I am out walking, maybe I should keep a bag in my pocket. It would be fun to scan all of the items and play with them like Colorforms. Now I've set myself another task...

If you can get a copy of issue #28 of The Bear Deluxe it is the contemporary art issue. This is yet another fine Portland periodical (free). I've flipped through it quickly, mostly only looked at the first page because Alan brought it to my attention, but that was inspiring. It looks like random patterns, but there are words in it. So I filled up extra space on one of my journal pages with the smallest lines I could manage. It looks like sky to me, with small birds here and there. And sort of brings to mind the comics I have been reading. I love the drawing in comics and of course I think I can't do it, but I probably can if I would only try. I have been attempting to draw more lately, it feels meditative, and it feels beyond what I can find a word for, but I've been reading a book called "Creativity From Potential to Realization" edited by Robert J. Sternberg and others. Only Chapter 8 has given me what I have been looking for, which is a listing of 13 intuitve, imaginative processes (from Sparks of Genius, 1999 Root-Bernstein):

1. Observing
2. Imaging
3. Abstracting
4. Pattern Recognizing
5. Pattern Forming
6. Analogizing
7. Empathizing
8. Body Thinking
9. Dimensional Thinking
10. Modeling
11. Playing
12. Transforming
13. Synthesizing

I am glad I found this book at the library since so little of it is what I was looking for, but I am so happy with this list and the subsequent explanation that I will probably be looking for Sparks of Genius next.