Art Journal Page 1

I don't know if it's proper to blog twice in one day; that feels a little indulgent. But my friend Cathie asked me to post my art journal page and here it is. I'm feeling more and more technically-able and that's a good thing. I'm not sure if the page is finished but I do know it's a start! The little girl reminds me of myself on the monkey bars at Torrence Grade School. I used to swing on them pretty fearlessly and climb trees with abandon so I'm not sure why I so often dream of being afraid I will fall. The picture of the feather is one of my prize finds. I opened an old photo album in my favorite thrift store in Oakland and it was filled with page after page of brilliantly-colored feathers like the kind men wore in the bands of their Fedoras. They were stuck in the book with black photo holders and I have the book of feathers plus pictures of the feathers, just waiting for the right project. The geode I brought back from Keokuk on my last trip there. It's one of my favorite amulets. Amulets. A word I just heard describing an art project done for an exhibit at MOMA by artist Song Dong. You can view the video on my Facebook. It was a collaboration he did with his mother who lives in Bejing. She is a hoarder and he has displayed the things she has collected over a lifetime. The curator says that in the end, the mother is happy because she wanted these things to be useful to her family and now they are, but not in the way she imagined they would be. I am fascinated with collections. My mother collected souvenir spoons; I don't know what became of them. She probably sold them to an antique shop, not thinking I would be interested in them. I collected stuffed animals when I was a child and my mother talked me into giving them to the woman that helped keep our house clean. For her children my mother said. But I was really not ready to give them up yet and I was always sorry I let them go when I did. I've just started collecting little hand-painted ceramic houses and shops from England that I found in a thrift store, but I consider my collection complete. I won't add to them, and when I've enjoyed them long enough, I'll probably pass them along to someone else who might like them. I'm a believer in traveling collections.