A Delve into Altered Art

When I first started art journaling another factor that kept me shy of really starting was the fact that I have a very difficult time delving deep inside to pull out the stuff I've worked on years of healing and getting beyond. My childhood for the most part was good but I faced many a challenge through the years. When I started reading about altered art I decided why not use that as a way to start, I suppose dig, into things I don't normally think of. I decided to title my first attempt at altered art "Fragmented". Why that title? Because when I look back on my childhood, on the things I've faced and experienced I see a lot of fragments of who I was, who I am and who I want to be. I often describe myself as "layered" and that's because I truly am layered. There are layers to me no one's ever seen and there are layers everyone has. There are also layers that certain people and ONLY those certain people have seen as well. I'm layered. I'm complex. I'm full of contradictions. I'm full of dreams. I'm full of imagination and mystery. Some parts of me are so easy to understand while other parts...other parts no one sees, knows or understands. I'm layered with a capital "L".

It wasn't until I delved into the concepts, the ideas of altered art that I found myself able to express well some of that, the hidden layers, and perhaps that's why I stalled again because delving into hidden layers and exploring them in art is not as easy as you all may think. Oh no it takes time and patience and a willingness TO want to tackle it all and for me that's a little difficult. Why? Well you see I'm one of those people who keeps a lot hidden, and I do mean A LOT! I don't share a lot with others and those I do share stuff with have to be pretty damned close to me and have to have earned my trust. You won't get to the inner me by simply saying hi or hanging around me. No you have to work for it because well that's just me.

When I tackled this stuff, the inner me stuff, it didn't last long and now I'm finally getting back to it. I've shared pages from this particular altered book at 1001 Journals but no where else. If you read the passages on the pages, which I apologize may not be the easiest due to this being a digital photograph, then you can probably see the underlying purpose of this particular altered book. This one is one I like but that will take no doubt countless years to complete or progress in. Still I've done a little bit of work in it so that's a good thing :)

Early Attempt at Art Journaling

As you can tell when I first started art journaling I didn't really do a lot. I was a bit nervous, a bit anxious, a bit uncertain. I'd paint a page and then stare at it or I wouldn't paint the page at all just look at it over and over trying to decide what to put on it.

Years ago I joined an LJ (online journal) community titled "alternate_books". The purpose of this community was to make a journal and mail it around the world so that others could add to it. The first year or so was great I'd mail out journals and receive others journals in return. I'd add my artwork and mail them onwards, but soon journals I had signed up for would become "lost in transit" whether it was the original creator who decided never to mail it to begin with or if it were someone else who had kept it and not sent it onward or if the thing just simply got lost somewhere in the mail I didn't know. It saddened me. All these journals people had going missing and quite a few of my own as well. I pretty much gave up on that community and well so did most of the other members. The comm still exists but no one really does anything anymore.

I started working then on making my own journals and started reading up on altered art, but again I'd often (more often than not mind you) would find myself in a familiar dilemma: staring for endless hours at a blank page or paint a page and stare at it not wanting to "mar" the pretty colored page. Crazy I know but so true.

Soon I delved a little more, started writing in some of those journals though I didn't much care for my own handwriting. Added a drawing or sketch here or there and threw a date on it so I could remember when it was done.

More often than not a lot of my earlier work is very similar to the picture above. I drew this one for a journal titled "In the Wild". It was a journal that I created for a website titled 1001 Journals. Sadly this one like so many of my other started journals for communities such as this is now forever lost. Either someone kept it, the mail lost it or it got tossed in someone's box and they forgot to mail it back to me :(

Needless to say I've since grown a little cautious about such communities as this having added to tons of journals only to ever see one or two come back to me and one or two make it back to their original owners.

I still like the idea of the community I just have a very hard time with the loss of so many journals that it saddens me enough to only cooperate on the very fringes of the community...meaning I send journals to those I know who will return them and sign up for a few and that as they say is that.

Anyways I digress...

So when I first started art journaling I took pictures with a digital camera or the pages I did (the photo above was a digital camera) therefore lots of the early works I've done if shared here will most likely be taken with a digital camera and thus not the greatest. It was several years later that I started scanning my work so hopefully the overall quality of the pics will improve... :)

Anyways so now I'm working on my actual own art journal and finding it fun but challenging. I will share some of those pics here in the future for now I think I'll just start by sharing a few older works :)

And if I ever figure out how to add multiple pics to a post here I shall do so. As I mentioned above this journal page is from a journal titled "In the Wild". The main premise? To journal about animals: your favorite animal, anything related to animals. I have more pics of this particular journal of the front cover, inside covers and the rest of my journal as well as pics of pages of journaling from other artists. As I mentioned above though this journal ended up lost somewhere in Arizona and the person who had it never replied to any attempts at contacting so sadly the journal is probably forever lost :( That folks is the downfall of journal comms I fear.

Love is a Funny Thing

You know there's all kinds of love out there: love between friends, love between family, love between two people...there's true love and puppy love and even love at first sight. It's an interesting thing and something I sometimes think about. I have loved, love and been loved in return but I've never really been IN love. I've never found that "special someone". I was engaged once but it was more a friendship love than anything to me. I've wondered sometimes if I may have at one point met that "special someone" and due to circumstances or other factors never pursued it. I'll never really know if that's the case or not. All I know is I'm fine with not being "in love" with another.

Years ago I made that decision to stay single, never marry. When I was younger my dream was to get married and have two kids, you know the typical girl and boy both relatively close in age so hey could grow up together and always have each other, always be close, always be friends. I had envisioned some handsome prince would come along and sweep me off my feet. You know that fairy tale belief that each and everyone has a significant other, a soul mate out there longing to become as one. I'm not really sure what my thoughts are on the soul mate thing now. All I know is I'm happy being me, being single and doing my own thing. Weird though because sometimes I think of what will be left after I'm gone from this life. I love to write stories, journal, draw, make scrapbooks and tons of other things. I love to collect glass figurines of dragons and wolves. I love to travel around the world and collect key chains and postcard from every place I've been but in the end after I'm gone who will get all that stuff and really is it that much of a concern? There's really no one to pass stuff onto that will "carry on my legacy" so to speak and that does bother me at times, but again it's the choice I have made to not marry, not have children so really why does it matter?

Still I love to watch those old sappy romantic movies, get all excited when I see the stars meet one another and fall in love, cry eons of tears when the leading characters lose one another and find each other again. I guess I'm one of those old romantics at art. While in my mind I've decided, made the choice to remain single in my heart I love to see those romantic movies have a happy ending, so yeah guess I'm a romantic sap.

I just wonder though what draws one to another? What makes someone meet another and say "wow they're the one for me?"

Guess I'll never know the true answer to that question but it's fun to contemplate at times. Guess it comes down to just one true fact: love is mysterious and love is a truly funny thing...