Sketchbook: 2009

For approximately a month now, I've been taking stock. My first big project has been to scan all of my sketchbooks since 2003. These represent the raw deal, the first impression, the play, the pondering, the manipulating...of potential finished work, of a planted seed, or simply the moment completed. I've decided I need to observe my own patterns visually, see when I was most productive or least productive with this important tool in an artist's life. The journey has revealed much to me personally and professionally. One conclusion is that I value process more than product, always have. So it is important to share this process, these years, with family, friends, students and colleagues. Art needs to be seen, period. So I'm attempting to share my sketchbook pages in as many formats as possible: Vuvox collages, facebook albums, and here on my own blog. I also planning on self-publishing a book so I can hold all of these in my hand at once, turning actual pages. I hope you gain some insight into me, you, or the act of art itself.

2009

This year including painted collages of my own town,  further stylized African art, and visual studies of educator Boyer's Commonalities that culminated in a solo show. Some of the pages are an exercise I did with MFAA students; we watched the movie Baraka and took 'visual notes' as we watched this dynamic film. Lastly, I went deeper with silhouetted symbols, layering them through mixed media, eventually creating finished work that culminated in a solo show in KC called Sense of Order.