The following gallery is documentation of my 9 inch x 12 inch/22.5 cm x 30cm spiral-bound sketchbook.

October 12, 2015

Images 1-17

I began this sketchbook in mid-September 2015. I do not sign or date the pages. I began by looking back at the Journal-Pages  from the previous year and then sketching out a visual dictionary of forms, musters and themes I used in that work; this covers the first three pages of the sketch book.

The fourth page of the sketchbook I began to work with some of the forms, etc. I had put down on the visual dictionary, using a variety of media. I found that the "all media" sketchbook I had purchased is pretty horrible paper; this is the first time I have bought this brand as the local supply stores no longer stock my preferred brand/paper weight. Eventually I took a pen and did some free form writing of my art supply store frustrations over the work.

I tried again to use a variety of media, and was again frustrated. Here I was using ideas from the visual dictionary as well as looking at some of the painting studies I have been doing from the Twinning photos.

Traveling to Ohio to deal with family business in early October I took my sketchbook, pens and markers with me. My mother has a large orange Murano glass vase that a good friend shipped to her from LA fifty years ago as a wedding present. As a child I was always fascinated by this vase with its glass stopper. I would carefully clean and dust it. Using glass cleaner to polish it. As a teenager I drew it many times, and even today when I work with orange and yellow I often imagine this glass vase. It sits on an old stereo console in the room I sleep in when I visit my parents. It is pretty dusty now. My mother and I discuss me taking it with me eventually; we did so again this visit and despite her saying to take it I could tell she wasn't quite ready to part with it. So I left it.

I gave up working with anything other than pen in this sketchbook. Perhaps I will find one with a sturdier weight paper for the next one. So I returned to the automatic "writing-drawing" that I have been working with since last winter. It was a good way to put what had been filling my head during the day while in Ohio onto paper, without being too direct or revealing.

And I also did a bit of drawing based on ideas from the visual dictionary at the front, playing with line and space.

On my way back to Rhode Island from Ohio after driving alone for 11 hours I ended up in a pretty awful hotel room, but it was the only one in the area still available despite booking over two weeks in advance. I wrote out my frustrations and oddly enough they took the form of a flower pot.

The hotel room had a huge crack in the ceiling that stretched from wall to wall directly over the bed. The light fixture in the ceiling had some pretty disturbing marks inside and outside of it...and they did not look like dead flies. I drew the crack and fixture before going to sleep, hoping that the plaster and/or fixture would not come crashing down on me in the middle of the night.

October 30, 2015

Images 18-31

I added a few more pages. Still exploring writing as drawing. I re-read Meyer Shapiro's Script in Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language (Shapiro, 1996) this past week, refreshing my thoughts on inversion, internal and external reader, and obscuring.

November 14, 2015

Images 32-44

The writing as drawing has continued on in the sketchbook. I am also including some photos of drawings done on the photo remnants from the work Process which I had in the OFE at SomoS Gallery this past summer during the Berlin Residency. I hung the photos using double stick tape. Because it is possible for me to easily and inexpensively re-order the prints from Shutterfly to quicken the de-installation of the work I stuck two photos together, back-to-back. I have now been working through the pile on my table in times of thought, or while reading or watching a film. Some of the pieces I have used mixed media on, one I have stitched, but I always work both sides. Here I include ones I have drawn on using the same pen I use in the writing as drawing sketches. The photos are 4 inches x 6 inches/10 cm x 15 cm on matte paper. 

February 12, 2016

Images 45-56

Still working with the written, obscured line of text creating the image, playing with the space of the page. I also began gently rubbing a grey colored pencil over the page to make the ghost impression of the previous page visible.

April 13, 2016

Images 57-63

Being focused on other things the past couple of months my sketchbook became covered in a layer of dust. Recently I was encouraged to consider edges, so I dusted off the sketchbook and began a few mixed media studies.

May 12, 2016

Images 64-71

Continuation of the previous months mixed media explorations.