The beauty of art journaling, for me, lies in it being something between a secret journal, locked and hidden away for ‘no one else to see”, and a painting exhibited in a gallery ‘for every one to see’. This is where my comfort zone is. This is where possibilities are. And where there are possibilities, you find freedom and you find play. An art journal is full of diversions, opportunities, opportunities to reveal and conceal. It is intimate and direct. It is all between you and one other soul.

“This is an art form that must be experienced as it was created, one on one! just as you are doing right now, your head bent over the pages, you feel the time pass. You see ideas unfold and deepen, you see risks, mistakes, regrets, thoughts, lessons, dreams, all set down on these pages, for an audience of ONE.” -Danny Gregory

I love these words by Walt Whitman:

“Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
to jump off into the midst of the sea,
rise again,
nod to me,
SHOUT!
And laughingly dash with your hair.”

 Yes…everyday, perhaps at a whim, we are free to go on a trip. It could be a trip to anywhere, really. Restricted by realities? unable to hop on a bus? How about imagination? Remember our mind’s ability to form new images of external ‘places’ not present to the senses? At anytime we can make the choice to be where we wish to be, to allow our lives to happen to us and make things happen in our lives…a beautiful collaboration of liberating passivity and freeing activity. So I went with my students to China and Tibet last Saturday from 10am to 12pm. My son fixed me this beautiful CD of folk Chinese music. I hung up the colorful Tibetan Prayer flags across the room. Scents of lemon and orange filled the air. We had a little tea party and got to work on our journals with the help of vibrant ephemera I purchased the weekend before on my family’s day trip to Chinatown. Just a few things set the mood for a fabulous trip. Amazing to me once and again to see the brilliancy (with dual meaning) shining through the individual journal pages. This is what I call a power trip. Do you go on power trips? Are you like me? Do you go on your little tropical balcony in dry Southern California and know that you are in the rain forest? Or look through the snow falling outside your window, imagining you are in sunny Southern California and actually ‘you ARE there’? I’d love to hear about your mind trips…

…and pop-ups on my mind, my kids’ minds, my friends’ minds and my students’ minds. You see, about 10 days ago, we met family friends Mike and Dassi, unexpectedly, at a ‘fiesta’. Mike told us about his new hobby, making custom pop-up cards for family and friends, depicting their interests, likes and such. A few days later we received a magnificent pop-up card from Mike. It had all four of us represented in a personal and whimsical manner. The opening of a card like that is sheer delight. It is a process. It’s not like a regular card that you open, you read, you close, you put down. No no..this one you receive, you feel, hmmm, it’s quite thick…you remove the envelope, and you see layers, you cannot wait, you open it, discover worlds, depths, heights, stories…you know you need to tame the excitement that comes over you, you need to have patience…to allow time for discovery…you keep coming back to it in later times…a total and comprehensive explorative travel. That’s when a pop-up frenzy was triggered in my house…I even made my students convert their 2D ‘Abstraction of Flowers’ journal pages into 3D pop-up pages. Later on I continued mine on my own for 2 days straight. Then I was showing it off shamelessly to some of my friends who responded with something like “Oh that is so awesome, I want to make one.”  A pop-up frenzy, I’m telling you. I obviously couldn’t get my 3D image into a 2D screen and therefore you find this spread where I tried to express the excitement of pop-ups! Thank you, Mike…there is nothing better than creating something out of nothing…perhaps inspiring others to create something out of nothing…which you did. 

Families…They come in all colors.

Will you always be there for me? That is the perpetual question. It seems to me that whether a child is reassured consistently of his mother’s presence in his life or actually has a reason to suspect absence, he would routinely pop the question: “Will you always be there for me, no matter what, for ever and ever, even if….” or the shorter version: “Will you always be there?” I often wonder where THERE is. Where is there for you?

…That’s what one student said while exploring ‘circles’ in her art journal in a session inspired by the art of the ancient Tibetan Mandala. This spontaneous statement clearly illustrates my intentions of teaching ‘creativity’ rather than teaching ‘art’. Learning art would be being introduced to the stunning Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting of two pink shells, and then being asked to paint a Georgia O’Keeffe. Learning creativity, on the other hand, would be being introduced to Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting of two pink shells, and then being asked to paint shells. When you do the first your learning would end as you lay down the brush. When you do the last your learning has just begun. As another student said: “…you will do more and different things you thought you cannot do.” And I say bring on the shells.

Chotchkie- a word derived from the Yiddish language derogatorily describing a little decorative ‘thing’ of little or no purpose we love to set around our house. Chotchkies have a bad rep and I do understand why. We may ask how can a fake Porcelain angel, a plastic flower or a Ceramic figurine of anything have a sentimental, aesthetic, financial, or any kind of value? On the other hand what are we without our chotchkies? What is our home unless adorned by chotchkies? How our stories are told with the absence of chotchkies? So disapprove all you want of chotchkies, knickknacks, trinkets, and such, but show me your home and I’ll show you an extensive collection of chotchkies. And you know why? Cause we NEED them. A-ha, yes, we do. No one can survive life chotchkieless. We NEED them to help define ourselves to us and to visitors of our space. To help us remember ourselves, remind us of our identity when we momentarily and routinely forget. They help us travel when we don’t have money for a ticket to an exotic land. They warm up our hearts. They beautify our days. They give us a sense of connection to a bigger, more exciting and interesting world than our house, to cultures, societies, nature, languages, people and to so much more. They fill up our senses. So how in the world do chotchkies have little or no value? Do you agree? Do chotchkies do anything else for you? And if so, what is it?