First Post Ever.

Its hard to know what to say on the first ever post… Something of an introduction? I’m not sure… I have a personal blog on blogger, and I’m not sure why I wanted to house this blog in wordpress, so I’m starting with a shaky relationship to wordpress. I can always relocate, if necessary, I guess.

Lately I’ve been more aware of the importance of documenting things of interest, daily life, preoccupations, thoughts,– anything really– in making art. Its amazing to see daily records or journals of meticulous perfection– even on the most mundane topics. One of the earliest records of weather in england was by a shut-in scientist who kept detailed records of changing weather patterns every day of his life for decades, with no intention of it being seen by another person nor the understanding it would be of great importance in the future.

Of course, there’s been a recent journaling craze both virtually in blog form and physically in the mode of scrapbooking and sketch crawls. Some of the journalling books are really lovely, representing a dedication to craft, observation, constant creativity or obsession.

Recommendations:

A Year in Japan

Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art

Illustrated Letters: Artists and Writers Correspond

Some of the less inspiring books i’ve seen are generally geared to the aging hobbyist, but they can still be useful for their notes on technique. Still, its inspiring to see journaling as a truly accessible and unpretentious form of folk art rooted in empowering every person to see the importance of their daily experience for documentation. Its a dismantling of the traditional, European view of Fine Art and history as establishment focused, as all art and historical records outside of those commissioned for royalty or the church were seen as blasphemous centuries ago. Centuries ago most of the common people didn’t even have knowledge of written language let alone the resources to record and preserve their stories (even visually) for longevity.

My mom, sister, and I came across a garbage bag filled with old journals in our garage last year. They were the tiny, classic diaries– complete with the key and lock. All written, we figured out, by my mom’s great aunt. We were so intrigued finding this mountain of journals from her life kept everyday between 1940-ish to 1970. We were tearing through them for the juicy bits, only to our dismay, to find almost every entry lasting only of one to three lines consisting usually of “Went to GM” (General Motors, where she worked in the factory) with “it rained” or “attended church bible study” thrown in variation. What compelled her to carefully recorded the same alternating 6 phrases everyday for three decades no one will know, but its fascinating to wonder.

The Notebook of Charles Crumb.

Throughout his life he kept stacks of journals compulsively filled with tiny, barely decipherable rambles and nonsensical stories. The older brother of R. Crumb, Charles’ progressive mental illness led his fervent cartooning into full scale graphomania. He, and his obsessive notebooks, are featured in “Crumb” the 1994 Terry Zwigoff documentary on cartoonist R. Crumb. His interviews in the film are fascinating and shed light on how he shaped his brother’s underground stardom yet, himself, spiraled into extreme reclusion and mental illness. Chillingly, he commits suicide after the interview, before the film was released. (Source: The Charles Crumb Art Gallery)

The Paris Sketchbook by Ronald Searle.

Searle is a hero of pen-and-ink. His Paris Sketchbook began as a travelogue of his trips to Paris and now is a classic yet a hard to find out-of-print book. On amazon.com there are a few copies listed for $75.00. Hopefully it will be reprinted in the near future. Lesser known: “The Secret Sketchbook of Ronald Searle” — his sketch journal of Hamburg’s Red Light District (Source: Seven Golden Camel blog)

Journals by commission.

I appreciate Danny Gregory– a self-taught illustrator, whose popular published journals have a cult-like following of admirers– for his coupling with “The Morning News” website. He has done a series of jobs for the online mag recording events from the famous Martha Stewart trial, to death row portraits, to an Amsterdam sex convention in his signature journalistic style combining descriptive text and images from the event. Its the artist as reporter, and I’d like to see more of that. Imagine the New York Times, sending illustrators to Paris to cover a protest or Ohio to cover a presidential debate in a visually informative article. Check here for Danny’s coverage of “Martha’s Big Day”.

Another good find on the topic of sketchbooks is a post I came across on an art forum. I can’t attest to the quality of the site as a whole, but this post, with its collection of links to traditional fine artists’ sketches : http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=350863