Over the past 6 months or so several of our members have become interested in learning to make books with the purpose of finding different ways of binding and using our journey daybook pages. Three of us made books at a retreat at St John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. Several other journey daybook members will learn to make books at a workshop at the Cedar Key Arts Center at the end of March. Because of this burgeoning interest, I have decided to begin a new page called BOOKMAKING. To inaugurate this new blog subject, I am posting a book made by Patty Jett. This construction is called a Tunnel Book, and Patty made it as a birthday card for me. The “pages”of this bookwork are made from xeroxed journey daybook pages that Patty made during a trip to New York two years ago. What a lovely gift I received, and I am most grateful to Patty!
Instead of drawing my cappuccino cup, I am eager to get out and work on this beautiful spring Florida Saturday. I that you feel the same way! We have all experienced such a cold winter with more inside than outside activity lately. To wet your appetite for group Journey Daybook activity, I am reminding you that there will be an Alumni Adventure Friday, March 19 at Rainbow Springs State Park. The plan is to meet at the concession stand inside the park at 11:30 AM with a bag lunch. Anne Miller is hosting this event and she has more information, if you need it. We will carpool; therefore check with others for driving opportunities. Also, check the postings on the Alumni Adventures page for more exciting future opportunities to work with a group. We now have one adventure each month, planned and arranged by a different JDB member.
Our next board meeting is planned for Tuesday, 16 March at 6:30 at Liquid Ginger in Gainesville. The meeting is open to any interested JDB member. If you are not a board member and wish to come, please call Anne Seraphine. If you are a board member and cannot come, please call Barbara Beynon.
There are some interesting public art exhibits that might be of interest to some of you -
Gainesville - Ruth Whiting at Randy Batista’s Media Image Gallery (by the Hippodrome) The work of this young artist includes a tiny handmade artist’s book.
Boston - at the Museum of Science. The work of Leonardo da Vinci is explored in exhibits and lectures.
New York - at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage.” The work of several obscure 19th century Victorian English women who may have been the first artists to use the medium of collage in shown in an exhibit curated by the Chicago Art Institute.
Sadly, Mama Kia lost her battle with bone cancer this Saturday, 20 February 2010. Some of you knew Mama Kia. Several others of you may remember that we stayed with her and worked with the children of Casa de Milagros, near Cusco, Peru, in November, 2007. Kia was a remarkable person! I have just spent an hour perusing the Chandler Sky Foundation website and watching the most recent video. When you can, I urge you to do the same with the expectation of being inspired by Kia’s life and work.
I feel that it is imperative that we complete the exchange of journey daybooks and ship the pages from Cedar Key and Florencia, Cuba to Kia’s children - her
“children of our one world.”
Last Friday, 11 of us gathered in Gainesville to view the wonderful quilt show at the museum. Joyfully, we prefaced our work of making journey daybook pages by celebrating with a birthday lunch at the Harn Museum. Thank you everyone!
If any of you have pages to post, please bring or send them to me. I will continue to post them on the page “Notes and Journey Daybook Pages.”
Eight of us spent last weekend at the Suwannee River State Park near Live Oak Florida. We shared three comfortable cabins, walked the leafy foot paths by the river, worked in our journey daybooks in solitude and together, and enjoyed comfort food furnished by our Journey Daybook board members.The food was so good that we voted to “stay home” to read, paint, and make star books with Patty Saturday evening.
Here, at the end of the retreat, we admire our journey daybook pages on a cabin porch.
We are happy to present our pages for you to see.
Pages by Peggy Herrick can be seen on her blog.
Pages by Anne Seraphine -
Pages by Anne Case -
Two journey daybook keepers went to Robinson’s Seafood on New Year’s Day to make pages at the fish market. View my page at http://margaretherrick.com/blog/
Our Board has decided to sponsor a retreat January 22-24, 2010. Looking for a place close to our homes in North Florida, we settled on the beautiful Suwannee River State Park. We hope that you will be inspired to join us after looking at the site and our description of the retreat (on the RETREATS page of this blog). E-mail us to reserve your place as soon as possible.
Our September Journey Daybook Alumni Adventure is held Friday, 13 September at this Alachua County historical museum. What an extraordinary experience for the 7 attendees who enjoy the museum for close to 3 hours! Please be sure to enjoy the posts on the “Notes and Journey Daybook” page and on my site.
On Friday, August 7th four of us float down the Ichetucknee River from the mid point to the low point for floating in this river State Park. With care, I bring along my camera and my journey daybook.The weather is hot. We bring lunches and picnic in the park before hiking down to the river for our excursion. We all splash, muse, and meditate in the beauty of this pristine Florida river, behaving like the many young people who are in our midst. As we float, we see turtles (who are tame and do not move as we close in on them) and numerous wildflowers. I am attracted to the rare spider lily, which I draw and paint. See my journey daybook page here. We carefully bring cameras and journey daybooks. Some of us work. Others just enjoy the view.
We will be leaving from Cedar Key Friday, 7 August at 8:45 AM. I calculate that there will be 5 of us in one car. Please meet at my house on Second Street. Bring your lunch and money to rent a raft. We will stop just outside the Ichetucknee State Park to rent the rafts which make this adventure a little easier, especially for those of us who wish to carry a camera and journey daybook.
If you have further questions, please call or e-mail me.
Our Journey Daybook Alumni have scheduled a journey to the Ichetucknee State Park for a 3-hour float on Friday, 7 August. In the past, we have been able to rent small rafts that accommodate journey daybooks, drawing materials, and cameras (with care!). This will be the first of our regularly scheduled alumni adventures planned and hosted by an individual. I, Peggy Herrick, am the host for this trip.
As plans are finalized, I will post these plans on the “Alumni Adventures” page.
4 July 2009 - The Great Clamerica Celebration in Cedar Key
I think that this one-day festival was the best ever of this 6-year annual celebration. Everyone seemed to have a great time in spite of the blazingly bright, hot, humid day, Thanks to the kindness of a houseguest, I have included a photo taken from the Cedar Key beach My own journey daybook page can be viewed on my blog. After various picnics, the day was topped off with a beautiful fireworks display which we watched in the coolness of deck chairs, overlooking the Sandspit. What a gift to be in Cedar Key on the fourth of July!
26 June 2009 - Making Journey Daybook Pages at Peggy’s House
Patty (not pictured) sat on the first floor back porch and worked before Tonya Witt’s hypertufa (cement sculpture) in the garden. She bravely painted in occasional rain showers.
I was the sissy of the group, working on the inside dining room table.
Please go to Notes and Journey Daybook Pages in order to see the work that we made.
Sue and I went to Poe Springs, an Alachua County park yesterday. It was a rainy day in our area, and the weather discouraged several alumni, but Sue and I were happy for the pleasant experience of working together quietly and peacefully. We encountered only one brief shower while at Poe Springs. Therefore, our determination to set out for this destination was affirmed. My journey daybook entry is found on my website. Here, Sue paints on the dock that extends into the Santa Fe River.
I am posting a link to the journal pages of Shirley Ende-saxe, who went on the 2008 Crizmac Day of the Dead trip in Mexico. Shirley keeps a daily journal. She is chiefly a collage artist. She teaches, sells her work, and has several published books. On this blog site, her images are descriptive and contain a running narrative. She also posts some lovely slides. I hope that you enjoy this art, as I have.
A friend recently sent me this link to a retreat sponsored by the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St Johns University and Abbey in Minnesota. This is the monastery which commissioned The St John’s Bible and where this amazing work of art is housed. I am presently pondering the notion of attending this year’s retreat. Please follow the links if any of you are interested in doing the same.
I have just signed up for an October trip to Mexico. It would be fun to have other journey daybook keepers join me on this Crizmac trip. See my blog and follow the links for more information.
Each year, small boats, often hand-made by their owners, congregate around our island during the beginning of May. This year, on Friday, May 1, several of us made journey daybook pages showing the boats and, in some cases, their sailors.
Here, Sue and Trent work in the shade near Cedar Key’s Sand Spit Park where the boats are launched.
Don’t forget to look at the “Notes and Journey Daybook Pages” to see the images.
Our board member and accomplished artist is having a show this weekend in Gainesville. Anne’s work will be exhibited at Eleanor Blair’s studio, 113 South Main Street, at an Opening during Art Walk this Friday night, March 27. Let’s all show up and cheer Anne on!
Five of us spent five days on a journey to view the St John’s Bible at the Moble Art Museum and then on to New Orleans last week. This was an amazing trip filled with many images, both seen, experienced, and produced. Here, on the last evening, the five of us sit enjoying dinner together. Visit “Notes and Journey Daybook Pages” to see more images.
In an effort to increase our blogging proficiency, several of us gave up our Friday JDB ALumni Adventure to work on our computers blogging together: writing and posting new images. We flung open the French doors and worked in the fresh Florida air on this beautiful day. Although there were a few challenges (my Airport stopped working toward the end of this process!), in general, our work was rewarded withl published posts and images. Look under “Notes and Journey Daybook Pages.”
Several of us will be going to Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans this week. With Lauren Garber Lake’s UF class as a model (see post below), we hope to continue our blogging efforts as we travel across the Gulf Coast. Keep watching!
Diane introduced Peggy to Lauren Garber Lake’s website. Lauren teaches drawing at the University of Florida and has taken groups of students to a variety of places to make very creative journals.
This morning Diane sent me a wonderful set of journal pages about Abraham Lincoln by this well-known NY Times artist. E N J O Y !
Here the group is studying pages that we made.
Four of our five - Anne takes the picture
This Friday’s outing was to the Thomas Center in Gainesville. Five of us toured the exhibits, walked the grounds, and made journey daybook pages at this beautiful, restored hotel which functions as an office and exhibit space as well as a banquet facility. One exhibit which especially caught our attention was the Rosewood Traveling Exhibit which documents the horror of death and destruction caused by fear and racial prejudice at a small village near Cedar Key in 1923. I think that all of us were shocked and saddened by the reality of this documentation, especially at the end of a week when we all felt so much hope, peace, and equanimity. A second exhibit, by Alachua County school children, was uplifting and gave us pride in our newest crop of young artists.
Instead of going to the Shell Mound on January 16, a few Journey Daybook alumni painted cement stepping stones on the patio of the United Methodist Church in Cedar Key. We helped our colleague, Sue Reichert, prepare the patio which was laid in preparation for the dedication of the new faith center. We worked in the cold, often stretching out on the frigid tiles, but the result was a mosaic of beautifully finished work that reflects the personality of this Cedar Key church family.
This is the third journey we have made to the Dudley Farm. (See posts below and on my site.) The State of Florida is threatening to close the Dudley Farm State Park because of budget cuts, and this is very sad for those of us who have enjoyed making journey daybook pages at this beautifully intact and partially restored working Florida farm. What is it about farms? Many of us seem to enjoy pondering and making images at such places - places where human hands and nature work together simulaneously and places that are rapidly disappearing in our mechanized world. This spring Florida’s Eden will sponsor its Paint out in this place from March 12 - 15. Enjoy the photos below and keep checking ”Nores and Journey Daybook Pages” below and my site for the images that we made.
Today is cold and windy and we are not inspired to drive far from our warm homes. Sue and I head east up County Road 345 in search of a good site for page making in our Journey Daybooks. I am feeling melancholy on this grey day. We picnic by the side of the road with a herd of familiar woods cattle. Then, driving back roads, we settle at the cemetery.
I write: A friend’s daughter is buried in this place. Julie’s short life is marked by tokens and memorabilia, which were tossed by last night’s wind. We straighten these as we absorb the sights and feelings of the grave and its markers. I am most touched a little green bird feeder that hangs from a cedar tree that shades this place of repose. Lively birds, dart about in the glimpses of setting sun Sue and I accidently happened on this place, or did we? The solemn mood fits.
Someone’s grey and white pet cat, lies dead by the side of the road.
I just received an e-mail from a friend who returned from a competitive NASA flight for teachers. Some of you may know Robert Ponzio. Ponz, who is a life-long journal keeper and teacher at Oak Hall School in Gainesville, drew in weightlessness over the Space Center on Sunday and is in the process of reporting on this experience on his blog. While reading and following the links Ponz gave, I stumbled across this article in Wired Magazine on the advantage of using the right brain. Pink’s thesis affirms my strong belief in the importance of human creative expression. I hope that you enjoy reading this material!
This afternoon 6 of us spent 4 hours with our dear Hedy listening to her wonderful stories of herself as sheepherder, poet, and marine biologist. Hedy’s life at Cane Brake Farm seems romantic and magical to those of us who retreat with Hedy. For her, life on this small North Florida working farm entails tremendous hard labor, bravery, and grit. This adventure was a real treat for our group, and our pages refect our response to a beautiful clear, cool November day. Check the Notes page and Peggy’s Blog to see individual pages.
I thought Journey Daybook makers might enjoy knowing about this up coming exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - Nov 1 - April 5, 2009
This exhibition celebrates The 1000 Journals Project, an ongoing collaborative and participatory experiment that follows 1,000 blank journals as they journey around the world. Each journal is stamped with a message inviting participants to draw, paste, rip, or write on its pages, and then pass it on when finished. Exchanged by friends and strangers or left in bus shelters and other unexpected places, the books have accumulated a rich tapestry of stories, drawings, and personal reflections.
Collectively, the journals have traveled to more than forty countries and all 50 states. Co-curated by anonymous project creator Someguy and Stephanie Pau of the SFMOMA Education Department, this presentation features a selection of journals that have returned to San Francisco. In keeping with the spirit of the project, journals and art supplies will be available to visitors, offering an open invitation to participate in this exciting social-art experiment. Best from, Mary Fox
Today, I enjoyed a lovely lunch at the Cedar Key Women’s Club. I spent an hour explaining the JDB Process and shared many of our journey daybook pages as slides. Sue Reichert ably assisted and brought along two of her beautiful journey daybooks. Several women are interested in learning the practice. I explained that the next JDB Adventure will be 13 March 2009 at the Fanning Springs State Park, north of Chiefland. All arrangements for this adventure can be arranged through Joleen Gonzalez, Coordinator of Continuing Education, Central Florida Community College. She can be reached at 352.493.9533, x 2106.
I used the past several days to update and post new news items on the two blogs. Not only do these activities give me valuable blogging experience, they give each of you more information, images, and inspiration to continue with your own Journey Daybook activities. Also, links in the blogs are established with the people and organizations with whom we work. I hope that you enjoy reading and following the links.
Please write your own posts, add your photos or journey daybook pages, and make comments whenever you wish.
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