"I can no longer look at nature and stay calm.
It sweeps me up, embracing me, swirling and moving in one continuous breath.
Everything is connected: the forest, life, and myself.
I wanted to paint these enormous feelings in a way that was big and free.
But painting in oil is slow and expensive, and watercolour is not intense enough, so I invented a new mixture: oil paint and gasoline.
The oil paint goes further and the colours stay clear and bright. Can you feel life and movement quivering in every brushstroke? "
emily carr
Before I wrap up my journals with cloth and threads, I open them randomly one more time and read whatever page opens up. Today, it happened to be this clipping of Emily Carr's text and painting (see below) in a journal from 2000.
I have seventeen journals wrapped now and it has taken me nearly a year to get this far along. I spend half an hour every day going through one, reading it as I type very quickly to enter the family story and my art making into my laptop in chronological order. Occasionally, I come across a gem that still resonates and I re-write or sketch it into my current journal.
It pleases me to wrap up these books and not look at the words and clippings and drawings any more. Now I just see them as beautiful blocks of time.
14 comments:
While I love the way they look, I could never do this.. brava to you, that you can..
binding your time
Are you familiar with Andy Warhol's practice of every day sweeping everything off his desk and into a box, which he sealed and labeled and put away? I have terrible problems with old stuff. Even going through boxes of old stuff with the intent to discard leads to hours and hours and hours of reading what's there.
I feel that this wrapping is a first step to actual discard. Maybe even burning.
I am spending hours and hours Kathy, and I look forward to spending it each day. I put the kitchen timer for 30 minutes and use the time as a way to re-connect with who I really am - who I really was. It's therapy in a way i think.
Then closing them and making them so that I can not go back anymore is a way of facing time's steady march - and that there are a lot of things yet to do, I can't look back. Must go forward.
I also think that a hundred of them in a book shelf would make a beautiful installation in an art gallery some day.
Thanks for all comments.
x
amazing
(making free ....?)
Yes, it is making me feel free I suppose. But I am also collecting a story of a mother who was a artist while parenting to the very best of her ability, four children. It's a story that I've forgotten parts of, while other parts have been repeated over dinner so many times, (not by me) they have become trite (or myth).
I am looking on this very slow way of making meaningful bundles as if it is a daily art practice.
And Kathy, thanks for that tidbit about Warhol. I had not heard it before.
x
The binding looks beautiful.
Again and again you astound me.
And, it occurs to me if I have the guts to do something like this, I won't have to burn the books before I die. Though mine are not precisely art as yours are surely, they are certainly blocks of time lived. Even if they end up in a dumpster, they will be so beautiful if I have the guts, the dedication, and the focus. You are a wonder Judy, a natural wonder.
what a legacy! I love how you've wrapped each one, sort of a containment
i think this is an absolutely brilliant notion.
Wow, what a beautiful way to honour your own past.
you have long inspired me, the way you steadfastly find time to art in the midst of familying.
This is a very meaningful and beautiful practice. More of us should do it. I like the thought, "blocks of time."
~ beautiful ~
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