With the tribe

 

 
 
 

MIND THE GAP - CAN'T GET RID OF THIS BIG WHITE SPACE! 

Add together, a collaborative art project, a pile of journals filled with art, photographs and the written word, a large table surrounded by the creators and what do you get? A lot of talking!

Saturday was the first meet up of eight of the 22 participants of the Intervention art journal project. With each book having its own theme, we spend a few weeks with each before passing onto the next in the circle. Around a year has rolled by since we began and the books are fattening up nicely, bursting with colour and collage, dreamscapes, surrealism, poetry, prose and err... phallic mushrooms!

 

Photo by Lucy Sharpe

 

We each brought the book we were working on - there was much excitement when I spotted my own (titled Words of Wisdom) in the pile. I am so in love with the work already inside of it.

 

I adore hanging out with other creatives - folk just like me who love to paint, write, take photographs and make mess. Even though I had never met any of these seven other ladies before, and only exchanged a few Facebook messages with a couple of them, I knew we would never be stuck for conversation!  Even if the rest arrived with sealed lips, I knew I could keep talking on my own on the subject for hours - but that wasn't necessary!

 

I don't get to meet with members of my tribe very often, so when I do...

 

Photo by Lucy Sharpe

We shared our thoughts and experiences from the project and our own personal stories of why we signed up to the project and how it has helped us develop as artists.

Photo by Lucy Sharpe

 

Crimbo (above) brought us all together, dreaming of a collaborative project that would push our creative direction and bring together a tribe. As we draw close to the final rounds of the books, we are making plans to share these mini-works of art with the world. I for one, can't wait to see all 22!

 

Photo by Lucy Sharpe

 The journal below is called Isolation. That's why it's on its own ;)



Where have I been?

 

Oh I am such a busy girl these days that my poor blog has become much neglected. The trouble is that there are just way too many distractions. I've been spending hours on Facebook groups - tut tut! I've been painting, adventuring in other dimensions, writing a vampire story, learning, reading and today I've done some gardening (and am feeling a little worse for wear as the thorns and insects scored my skin with their displeasure at my disturbing their summertime slumbers with my hedge-trimmer, secateurs and digging implements!). I've also got to level 96 on Candy Crush, but really that's nothing to be proud of! Frankly there just aren't enough hours in the day for blogging too, and when I write for a living, sometimes it's just too much to think up fancy paragraphs when a sentence will usually suffice on Facebook!

I have to say that sometimes, as much as I love it, sometimes social media can just get a little bit too overwhelming! It's also expensive. All those music, art supply and book recommendations are costing me a fortune!

However, without it I would not be the social butterfly I am. How could I keep up with my worldwide tribes of like-minded artistic souls? Today I am sharing another collaboration art journal set of pages. The theme of the latest of these is The Goddess - she who is Mother to earth, nurture, love, growth. The Goddess has been appearing in my artwork with increasing regularity over the few weeks, so it was kismet that She should be with me this week.

Chakras

A collaborative piece. An earlier artist(s) created the background and drew the figure. I coloured in her face.

Bossa nova

Just when you thought you might get a blog post that didn't reference Glastonbury, I sneak one in under a Latin American radar!

You see, the thing is, I'm doing another of these round robin journals and am working on Sue Richardson's bossa-nova-themed book. Sue is a jazz musician which I find terribly exciting and exotic. In fact, I was so inspired that I ended up buying a whole new album of jaunty tunes - but more on that in a moment. Let's first drift through the mists to the picture above....

Do you wonder sometimes how the universe conspires to set things in perfect alignment for you. I return from my trip to the fabled land with the magic of the Lady of the Lake and lyrics of Roxy Music floating on repeat through my conscious, only to find a journal with a distinctly up-beat Latin American feel - not a match to my mood at all... or was it?

For listen carefully to the smooth tones of Mr Ferry singing Avalon and you'll find words of a very serendipitous nature!

So, with one double-page spread under my belt I could have had done with it and moved onto my next project - but no! For you see, I am something of a fan of the Latin beat - I think I may have been Brazilian in a former life. I wanted to paint those rhythms after all and tap my brushes like drumsticks and dance the paint across the page. I thought a new iTunes purchase might help, so added to my overflowing hard drive a little bossa nova compilation for the Muse to dance to - and samba she did, swinging those hips and flicking her tresses bedecked with feathers and sequins (she's such a party girl!)

It's the music I remember from my Dad's vinyl collection (Wes Montgomery, Charlie Byrd, Stan Getz) - the kind I would scoff at as a New Romantic teenager but which I have come to love. A bit like olives I think - a taste one acquires as one grows older and we stop consuming the type of sugary substances that dull our taste buds.

So, tomorrow this journal goes in the post and I await the next.

\|I'm also posting Gemma's 'purple' journal - but that's a whole other blog post....

Until then...