Images and Exhibits

A few months ago the people at Asheville BookWorks in Asheville, NC, (www.ashevillebookworks.com) invited me to be the curator of an exhibit of journals.  Below is the statement I wrote for them after I juried the show.  And below that is the first installment of the show itself.  I'll keep posting until I get all the pieces (one page from each journal) up.  I wish you could have been at the opening and able to look through the books-- intriguing, astonishing, startling, beautiful, and very easy to get lost in.  I spent six hours today photographing, and most of that time I spent getting caught up in the work I was supposed to be shooting.

Statement:

A Conundrum:  How to jury (i.e. judge) an art exhibit of work that was (1.) not made for public consumption (2. ) made un-self-consciously and with the expectation that it would never be judged and that it was not, in fact, artwork at all, but some other- completely different- kind of animal that, while it may have aesthetic appeal to those who happen to see it, was intended for wholly other purposes than artwork. 

Solution:  seek out those journals that are neither artwork in the guise of a journal nor a journal trying to pass itself off as artwork.

How to do that:  Look for journals that clearly have useful functions, i.e. ones that allow the journal-keeper to study something closely (whether this be shoes on subway passengers or the form and colors of an amaryllis); to record something that has gripped the imagination (the migration of birds, the habits and disposition of kelp); to record thoughts, dreams, ideas for future artwork (odd juxtapositions, never-before-seen animals); to freewheel and brainstorm and try out ideas, new processes (for machinery, for a book form, for a novel, for a party);  to remember and re-experience travel (to Italy, to Australia, on- the- road to wherever);  to spill out emotions and give form to dreams and subconscious mutterings (contentment, fear, anger, bliss);  to keep track of time (a day, a year, ten years);  to study something exhaustively (color, design, pigments, cooking, faces; to record a place (a mountainside village, the backyard).

Many, many thanks to you brave and generous journal-keepers who have made your private work available to those of us who love the chance to peek into the fascinating minds of others.  The enormous beauty of your work derives from your honesty and clarity of purpose.

 The Exhibit:

 Visit Annie Cicale on the web at www.cicaleletteringdesign.com

 Visit Jill Berry on the web at www.jillberrydesign.com

 Visit Margaret Couch Cogswell on the web at http://margaretcouchcogswell.blogspot.com

Visit Guylaine Couture on the web at www.gycouture.com

Visit Elizabeth Simmonds on the web at www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Elizabeth Simmonds

Visit Justin Waldstein on the web at http://justinwaldstein.com