Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Calling my Art Tribe friends....

Please join a round of Circle Journals!

Dorm 202, artists friends, family members...

Now that we are through the ArtFest fun and trading making I want to continue that art tribe feeling. A couple of theme ideas: a particular colour theme, winter holidays, rituals (birthday, wedding, baby showers…), kitchen (include some recipes), wine, coffee, tea, farmer’s markets, our studios, quotations.

My dream, 4 - 10 fun & creative fellow artists to join me. It doesn't matter if you haven't done this before! I am especially interested in meeting folks in the Seattle area, and handing off the journals at coffeehouses during art meet-up times. We will happily include folks we need to mail to as well, including international folks (please let me know if you do not want to ship international and we will work it out when coming up with the circle rotation).

Here are the basics:
1- Brainstorm and choose a theme that speaks to you. A theme you will want to see what other peoples take is on it. One that inspires you enough that you will want to look at this journal over and over.

2- Design your journal. Choose a lightweight one since we are mailing. 6x6 or 8x8 is good. Any type is OK.

3- Mail your journal to your assigned person (or plan a meet up with them to hand off) and it will make its way through the circle to be filled by your fellow journalers. Be prepared for a trip to the post office every other week to mail a journal Priority Mail (or First Class if you are sending early within the 10 days you have the journal) onto the next person.

4- When you receive a journal in the mail and have 10 days from the day you receive it to complete a layout for it. I think visual art journal vs scrapbook, I will use primarily acrylic paint, pens and paper bits. But any medium you choose to use is great. You can go digital, collage, scrap, stamping, paint, drawing...whatever medium is speaking to you at the time. I really enjoyed the wide variety I saw at ArtFest. I plan on using my best supplies and ideas when completing layouts and will keep the person who the journal belongs to in mind because I want them to be happy with what I created for them. If you will be on vacation, have big stuff happening in your life during the 10 days you will have a journal, work ahead (based on the posted photos of the journal) so that you can slip your work into the journal and not slow down the progress of the journal.

5- You MUST post your layouts. A Blog is not required, you can use a flickr account, or a message board or something of that sort. All your fellow circle journalers must be able to view your page progress.

6- After you complete all the layouts your journal should be coming home soon and will arrive back to you filled full fat and happy with layouts of your theme.
To sign up, comment on this post. If we don't "know" each other, that’s fabulous, I’ll meet some new artist bloggers! But you have to promise to stick to the time line AND post layouts as you complete them. *Seriously*

We can expect the Circle Journal project to take 2-5 months, depending on the number of participants and whether or not people take the full 10 days to send the journal on. To see some incredible ideas see: http://shopgirl.typepad.com/photos/circle_journal_2007/index.html

This invitation is open through March or until we get 10 artists signed up. Please email me with questions/suggestions.

Thanks to Andrea at -- http://www.shopgirl.typepad.com/ for the idea and the link to the great typepad photo samples.

8 comments:

Gwen said...

I would love to do this, Celeste! I would prefer to do at least a 6X6journal, nothing smaller. I don't have an idea for a theme yet, but I think that this is a great idea.

Anonymous said...

I'm in! Let me think up a theme...

andrea said...

Oh yea!! I'm in too if you will have me. I love this stuff and am excited to meet everyone! I agree with Gwen about the size. 4x4s dont leave much room to work.

m i c h e l l e said...

Hi Celeste...please count me in! Andrea and I live near each other so we can meet for coffee to trade off!

Thanks!!!

Cheryl Connell said...

Great idea Celeste! And you tempt me so much - I am in Andrea's circle journal swap right now and I think its just too much for someone to send to me and me to mail too. Over 10 dollars a pop and sometimes over 15! That's crazy - stupid international borders. :(

I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with though! Are you doing Kristies fatbook? I can handle that anyways!

Cheryl

Krisite LaRose said...

Hey there-
I'm in!
I have been having a blast working in peoples books- we started some impromtu sharing books to work in at the monthy swap I go to- I brought my Asian book- the one I cut each page out separately w/ baby scisors. :) lol

I think I may have the perfect book to work in! :)

Anonymous said...

really behind in posting...i saw the link to th circle journal over at michelle's blog...are you still open for members? not to worry...i wo't be offended if you have a full house!!
stephanie
room202 up
earthmothr@aol.com

Danny W said...

Thanks great bloog post