July 11, 2015. Alone time together: Co-creating with Jess in our first attempts to create a framework.

Alone time together

Michele and Jess (above) & Michele's journal alone (below) c. 2015

Watercolor, oil pastel, markers, pen, colored pencil & collage in journals

My experience seemed strange... how my image began.  I was really unsure.  I worked with an open journal-- an open book. I created a blue frame.  Each side reminded me of a first page and last page, respectively. The words, "In the beginning" and "In the end" were added.  All drawing then happened on the right side.  I felt frustrated with the face in the crease.  It was intended to be a face as I literally followed natural lines and creases in the fold, and marks on the natural paper in the journal.  It started as realistic with colored pencil then morphed into the abstract with oil pastel.  I watched myself add random marks that became a wing.  I smudged, added a hand holding the wing/feather, and included "words" in the background.

I couldn't add to the left.  It didn't feel "right".  I paused and observed... nothing came to mind.  No desire entered me to add anything.  Maybe I was feeling like I couldn't reflect back, or maybe it was simply a struggle in not knowing HOW to begin...  Maybe I have more focused vision of an end product.  I am thankful that Jess and I were meeting to use art making as a process to inform our intended professional journey of writing together.  

Time and time again, the art shows us what is on our minds.  This is not conscious, but the material behind consciousness.  It is latent.  It pushes us forward.  Sometimes our defenses react and work extra hard to keep the information away and out of sight.  Reflecting back, I think the latter was true for me.  How could we develop a project without a foundation?  How can we put energy into a finished project without any real foundation established (or made conscious) to support it?  These are aspects I need to explore both alone and in collaboration with Jess.

I closed the exploration by turning the page.  I left an impression on the left side by rubbing the back of the right. In enhancing the words "In the beginning", the "N" became an "M": "I'm the beginning".  Is this where our writing project can start?  Can it start with "I am"?

Looking at our books together we discovered several interesting elements: Color, placement, and form.

Color: The warm tones of pink, yellow, and orange that exist on each of our right-sided pages.  We sat across from one another.  While we shared the materials, there was a very wide variety of mediums and color palettes.  We sat outside on steps with the materials between us.  We each started with our books on the concrete.  As I became increasingly frustrated with the face, I turned slightly away from Jess and held my journal on my lap.  We were not conscious of the similar colors until we put the images near one another as in the above photo.

Placement and form:  I see patterns of boxes and forms that resonate between our images. The wing appears reminiscent of the blue, purple, and grey lines extending to the upper right hand corner of Jess' image.  Jess' building shadows also seem to appear in the black area in the crease of my journal and between the pages.

So what happens next?  From this we decided that we need to meet again for more art making, alone together.