“You mustn’t be frightened
if a sadness rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety – like light and cloud-shadows,
moves over your hands and everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in the palm of its hand
and will not let you fall.”
–Rilke
This is from Sandy Brown Jensen’s current art journal. It is being featured this week on Tumblr’s Journal-Inspirations site.
A recent Daily Create asked us to video “where our feet go.” I couldn’t face the cliched video-pointing-down-at-feet-walking, so I put on a bathing suit, grabbed my Go Pro and sank into my hot tub for both still and video photography.
I was surprised at how dreamy the resulting images were.
As my Meditations on Gratitude online class with Laura Valenti continues, we are encouraged to look around us at everyday moments and objects as worthy a moment of gratitude. I have been taking photographs around the property to celebrate this little corner of the world one quiet corner of June 2016.
I like this shot because it conveys the sense I always have of our house being like a longhouse, full of mythological beings, adrift with stories and dreams.
Cheshire Cat: Oh, by the way, if you’d really like to know, he went that way.
Alice: Who did?
Cheshire Cat: The White Rabbit.
Alice: He did?
Cheshire Cat: He did what?
Alice: Went that way.
Cheshire Cat: Who did?
Alice: The White Rabbit.
Cheshire Cat: What rabbit?
Alice: But didn’t you just say – I mean – Oh, dear.
Cheshire Cat: Can you stand on your head?
Alice: Oh!
In today’s Daily Create, we were asked to draw our childhood home. I have done this drawing many times over the years, and I notice it has gotten less and less specific as time wears away at the bright stones of memory, polishing them down to their glowing centers.
Now it is mountains, trees, tracks, river, house.
I grew up on the Wenatchee River in the foothills of the Enchantments. The image of me upper left is from an underwater shoot a couple of days ago and seems to me a face full of memory.
Even a rudimentary sketch like this seems beautiful to me, and I stare at it falling into a reverie of a time both long ago and yet still a room I can walk into that is as close as breathing.
The Mysterious Night Journal for me used to be gel pens or Prismacolor on black paper, but as I work in my art journal and so often disappear into the many rooms of memory, I see it is the canvas of the soul.
Your Art Journal is the canvas of your soul.
Gratitude wells up
like fresh water in a green pool.
Heart, be a frog!
Cat curled around stone
announcing “POETRY! in case
we had forgotten.
After canning peaches, I had one
clear jar left. I put my grandmother
in there along with the apples
she was peeling. I added a sharp
handful of mint from my husband’s garden,
a tube of Opera Pink Paint
and the shadow of a summer
fern on a slate rock face.
The sound of a train,
dawn light over the Three Sisters.
I found five memories that would fit
and slipped
a whole head of garlic down the side
along with a feathery branch
of dill and something
like a song. Pressure
cooked by time,
labelled, shelved, ready
to be given away.
NOTE: In a previous post, Creating a Gratitude Art Journal, I posted a short video explaining that I am taking a Meditations on Gratitude Photography class online with Laura Valenti. She asked us to find a repository for our “grats,” or items for which we feel gratitude on a daily basis, and I began with the Gratitude Art Journal, although I’m not sure how I’ll go forward. She suggested a Gratitude Jar, which gave me the idea for the poem “Canning Grats.”
METHODS AND MATERIALS:
I was reminded of the value and fun of a List Poem by Natalie Goldberg in her book The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language.
Tell us in the comment box directly below!
I am documenting my journey through Laura Valenti’s Meditations on Gratitude Online Photography class with short videos. This one introduces my art journal as a place to collect my moments of gratitude.
My favorite moment in it is when I totally serendipitously video my cat Pookie curled around a stone called “Poetry.” I took a screen shot of it, and I’m going to put it in as the first image in the journal.
I just finished reading the 1980 Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe by Laurie Lisle, which I highly recommend for anyone just wanting to wrap their head around the life and legend of this phenomenal artist.
I just returned from a pilgrimage to her two houses in New Mexico, one at Ghost Ranch where we stayed a few days to explore and photograph “O’Keeffe Country.” Then we visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. It was there that I bought the book as well as many prints, cards, and additional art books focusing on this artist.
My trip was so visually rich that I have been floundering, trying to figure out how to integrate all the visual and intellectual information I’ve taken in. One thing I did was buy a big landscape view watercolor Moleskine sketchbook and began art journaling.
I title all my journals, and this one is called “Working Into My Own,” with an O’Keeffe quote that is meaningful to me at this stage of my life:
“I was alone and singularly free, working into my own–no one to satisfy but myself.” —Georgia O’Keeffe Some Memories of Drawings
Now that I’ve finished the biography, I am looking deeply at her paintings. For this art journal page, I was studying the composition of her “Lake and Mountains” because I was fascinated by the egg shape. It took me a long time to figure out it was supposed to be a lake:
O’Keeffe is the Queen of Simplicity, of smooth, pared-down abstractions and a flawless surface application of paint, all of which I admire but do not personally aspire to.
I added mysterious dark shapes into my landscape using torn tissue paper. I love the spontaneous, unexpected effects of torn paper and the full range of playful collage tools and techniques that typify the art journal aesthetic.
Have you been doing any art lately? Discovered ay new artists or fun techniques?
The inaugural Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal Course went extremely well! A new section has opened and is available for enrollment now for $75.00:
Welcome to Your Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal Online Class
Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal began one day in Eastern Oregon when sister Cheryl gave sister Sandy a black paper artist’s journal and a handful of gel pens and Prismacolor pencils. Both of us started first to do scribble art.
Out of the darkness of the page emerged the figures of dream and imagination. I was as if we were cave painters putting our hands to the dark cave walls and blowing paint to mark our passing there. Spirit figures emerged from the dark pages of the cave and began to move in living color.
In 2008, we began posting our Mysterious Night Vision Field Journals on our blog. Memories, dreams, and reflections arose spontaneously from the Well of Soul.
In our Mysterious Night Vision Field Journals, we see the outer world in reverse, as if in a mirror. Slightly disoriented, in love with vivid color, we pursue the soul’s uncensored purpose.
We are so glad you are joining us!
In this class, you will be given a short lesson and a drawing assignment or challenge every other day. Videos and examples are provided for direction and inspiration. There are also bonus assignments for those who have time to explore more deeply.
Some of the assignments are:
You will write about your images, then take a photo (with your cell phone, for example) and add to the class. There you will be able to give and receive imaginative, supportive feedback.
Cheryl Renee Long is the instructor for this course. She’s the blonde in the photo.
Her sister, Sandy Brown Jensen, will be taking the course alongside you. Sandy is also the resident techie, so feel free to consult with her with any tech related questions at sandybrownjensen@gmail.com
We love our Mysterious Night Vision Journals, and we are excited to be sharing this passion with you.
On March 5, 2016, Daniel Smith Artist Supplies in Seattle, WA, sponsored a Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal workshop by Cheryl Renee Long and Sandy Brown Jensen. This video captures that event and the spontaneous art produced by the 13 participants. The pool is still open–jump on in! The registration button is on the home page of this blog post.
But ideas are everywhere. We mere humans cannot actualize the abundance of creativity that is available to us.
