Hard Working Journals

Today's post shows two of my very hard-working journals.  I treasure these two because I would be lost without them.  The first is a journal that I made for an art project that I'm working on with my friend Laura.  For over a year we've been diverging and converging as we circle in on ways to express visually our diverse as well as common experience of living in the exact same neighborhood in New Orleans (before we knew each other and at different periods with only a few overlapping years in the late 70s).  On the page shown we combined our words and images (my map and drawing, her little relief print, and both our written passages) so that the images and words could stew in the same pot.  She has a journal of the project also.  When we do our actual prints we  pull images and ideas from our journals.This second journal is a notebook that I use for Piece Work Wallets & Things, a micro- business that my friend Fran and I have had for about 18 months.  We design and make and sell wallets, small shoulder bags, checkbook covers, and small flat wallets out of recycled materials such as chicken feed bags, coffee bags, Kettle potato chip bags, and other durable, beautiful material that was headed for the landfill.  This page is a troubleshooting research and design page.  The journal is bursting with extra pieces of paper, receipts, letters from customers, business cards, etc.  I built in four envelopes to hold these things, and next time I will build in more!  The book itself is made out of a bird seed bag, sewn on the same treadle sewing machine that we use to make our wallets and things.  I used grid paper because so much of the journal deals with design.

Below is a picture of the back of the outside of this over-worked creature!  Check out our Piece Work blog (where you can also order a wallet, should you want to) at www.weRpiecework.blogspot.com.