Don't forget:
Monday, February 20, 7 to 9 p.m.
The Journey of Caregiving through the Art of the Journal
—with Clare Farrell and Anita White
At MCBA. The meeting is free and open to adult journal keepers.
The journal serves a variety of functions. Those functions are unique to each individual artist. Over the lifetime of the artist the visual journal will change to accommodate the changes in an artist's life. That evolution is a good thing. Join us tonight to learn how two artists are using their journals to address the experiences of caregiving. Each artist will speak for approximately 30 minutes and there will be a period for questions as well. Bring your own journals for sharing after the presentations.
Part A: Journaling as a Quiet Respite from Stressful Times—with Clare Farrell.
Clare will discuss how she uses her journal as an island of calm, "a place to land and rest for a few moments," by drawing from her imagination and engaging her sense of play and meditation through the use of color and pattern as she negotiates the path of caregiving with her father.
Part B: Drawing the Moments that Matter—with Anita White
Anita will present samples of sketching done to document a variety of moments in the experience of her family as she deals with hospitalization, change, and adaptation.
This is a topic that would be of great interest to art journalists from all over. Is there a way to share some of the discussion online or by video?
Posted by: teri | February 18, 2012 at 09:06 AM
Teri, I don't know. We're rather an informal group and I don't know how the presenters would feel about being video taped, and we don't have a mic to get questions (unmuffled) from the audience. So I think it might be technically beyond what I can achieve for you at this time.
I have even abandoned writing posts with detailed meeting notes and lots of photos because of the time involved and my own dwindling amount of personal time.
Posts like today's tend to be something that really function as a reminder for the local readers who are part of or want to become part of that group.
Perhaps the best these posts can do, for the far flung readers of this blog, is to suggest topics that would be worthwhile discussing in your local area.
One of the hopes I have for the MCBA Visual Journal Collective is that it will generate interest in other locations for people to get together in a more structured way (as opposed to just getting together for a coffee/discussion) and bring in local artists to spur the discussion.
Perhaps you can find local journal artists to share with on this topic?
I'll try to keep some notes of the group and take a photo or two, but frankly the last couple of meetings I've been so busy doing the things that keep the meeting moving that I haven't even thought to take my camera out until all is packed up and I'm in my car going home.
I've asked other attendees, many of whom blog and also take photos, if they would share links to their posts by the end of a meeting week so I could put them all in post then. That is one way to get different info about what happened from a variety of sources. I hope for this event some of that will happen. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Check back next week perhaps and see if something has made it on to the blog.
In an ideal world I would tape all the meetings and have interviews with the people and additional print materials and so on. We get great artists coming and sharing their artwork, inspiring us. But it's just me, with no budget, and no tech equipment.
At least now we meet every 3rd Monday of each month (we now meet in May and December too), so if you are ever in the Twin Cities on a 3rd Monday you know where you need to go!
We'll see what happens on Monday. I wish we could do a internet feed so you could watch, but that's way beyond my tech abilities.
Posted by: Roz Stendahl | February 18, 2012 at 12:58 PM