It is a beautiful thing - a visual diary. Someone's record of their day, infused with meaning that often only they understand. I began my first in 1998 through a project coordinated by Adele Outerridge from The Studio in Brisbane which she shares with Wim de Vos. There were eight of us, Australia wide, this first year. Artists who committed to doing a drawing a day - not a work of art, but a visual record of what we did that day, what we felt or saw. Maybe a suggestion of what we had been working on in our studios that day - a smear of paint, a torn up etching, an embossing ... one of my drawings was done with chocolate and wine after a lovely dinner party which left me with no desire to draw!
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| 1998 dAd book - susan bowers |
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| 1998 dAd book and 2006 dAd bound in 12 monthly books |
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| complex coptic binding using tabs |
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| first foray into mark making |
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| I love using transparent overlays |
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| rusting pages helped with drawing into them |
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| my first embossing |
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| transparent paper and ink |
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| dabbling with monoprints |
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| sketchings |
The dAd Project is now world wide and hundreds are involved. Adele still coordinates and she and Wim have continued to draw each day. My discipline has been sadly lacking - it sounds so easy but it is quite a difficult thing to maintain. In the first year we all found it very difficult initially, then addictive and absorbing. I have begun and stopped almost every year since 1998, some years only one or two pages have been done. I do not mind - those pages that were done are a lovely reminder of what I did, or what I thought about that day. This year I began again, stopped some time in February and decided that this blog would take place of the drawing a day.
The blogging experience is turning out to be like my daily drawing - difficult, now a little addictive and hopefully soon, absorbing. Not so much so that I do not move forward with my art practice, but as an addition to it in maintaining a certain discipline, and using it as a record of my creative processes.
Oh........
ReplyDeleteI sitting over here salivating over your lovely drawings, pages, books, paper, rusting...just all of it. My hands keep reaching out to touch the paper and the bindings, but this darned computer screen keeps getting in the way.
Anyone who can do such a practice a day has my total admiration for the dedication it takes.
And your thinking about the blog is good. I began mine as a way to ensure that I actually got in the studio and worked after a two year hiatus when we adopted our daughters. After all, if one starts an art blog, one must have something to post about.
Enjoy!
You are right about the blog. Fiona and I learnt about blogging together a couple of years ago and she went home and started straight away. Hers is such a beautiful and often wise blog. At this stage as a fledgling blogger, it is a discipline to remember to photograph work as you do it. I am working on a rather complex project called 'a sense of place' at the moment - several rather large etchings and smaller ones to overlay in transparencies. It is going to take the next month or more to bring to some form of conclusion and 'bloggability' - so in the mean time I am blogging on bits and pieces!
DeleteI certainly think blogs can be a place to work things out.. to jot things down... to share.... to experiment... to create.... they are merely a different tool in the arty tool box.... (ps love the look of those coptic bound delights)
ReplyDeleteThanks Ronnie. I am still working out how to make blogging work best for me. As a discipline it is certainly good, as a record it will be invaluable as and when I begin to blog new work, and I suspect that one of the blogs greatest attribute is the way it connects you to other artists. Certainly I have really enjoyed the privilege of venturing into other artists studios through their blogs which are doorways into their creativity.
DeleteI'm enjoying your blog. Glad you are, too.
ReplyDeleteThanks Teri - I certainly am enjoying the process. I think it will enable me to be more considered about whatI am doing in my studio.
Deletewhat a beautiful and thoughtful post - I concur with you on most everything - I too put food in my journals - the cranberry sauce was quite lovely, I have gathered wild berries for making purple smears - and "ink" and I use coffee and tea almost every day...
ReplyDeleteyour journals are gorgeous and inspiring,
xox - eb.
Thank you - am glad to know that there are more 'oddies' out there - chocolate and berry smearers........ Love it!
DeleteIt does require a great deal of discipline to do a page a day, no matter how much work is required. You get a gold star from me, even several gold stars. Your work is just so beautiful.
ReplyDeleteDon't deserve gold stars ......... Wish I had kept up the discipline but am certainly enjoying blogging a few times a week. I find it a discipline in itself, though certainly far easier than drawing, no matter how wonderfully, each day.
DeleteI am enthralled with your bound books... so many different pages and all wonderful
ReplyDeleteAs much as I love looking at your amazing DaD books; I love it even more that you are blogging! These images are all so lovely and representative of different aspects of your arty-life and a lovely reminder of the journey, the steps, the progress, the life...
ReplyDeleteThank you Donna. I am looking forward to posting on some of my other dAD books too - not that I ever actually completed a full year after that first one.
ReplyDeletedaily practice of ANYthing is profound and difficult and easy and simple. ha! but what happens inside that discipline is for each of us what it's all about. i think.
ReplyDeleteHi Susan. I've just discovered your work, via Fiona Dempster's blog (which is quite a new discovery for me too), and I love it. Especially your etchings. Can I ask you how you rust paper? I have soaked paper and fabric in walnut ink, tea and coffee, but I haven't tried rusting it.
ReplyDeleteHello Sam. Thank you for coming by my blog - I have really enjoyed a ramble around yours. I am glad you like my etchings - they are really the only part of my 'real' work I have blogged as yet ..... not sure whether to blog my real 'stuff' or get a web site up and running. New to this world so am still trying to make decisions. Of course I am blogging on some of my artist's books and consider them very much my 'real' work. Looking forward to blogging on the collaboration between Fiona and me. I will dig up my recipe for rust and send it to you with pleasure. One of the other things to do is to google it .... rusting paper.... and you get heaps of recipes but mostly all very similar. I usually though not always use tea first and then your have two more baths to soak your paper in - one is caustic soda and one is ferrous sulphate. Varying results occur depending upon the order in which you soak your papers so enjoy having a play once you start. Remember always to wash your papers after they have set as this removes all the excess or loose material. Enjoy.
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