Exquisite & Delicate - The Journals of Derika Volpi

This coming Saturday, 17 September, I am very excited to be hosting a visual journaling workshop at the Play Café which will be taught by my wonderful friend and artist, Derika Volpi.  She holds a BA (Fine Arts) degree in Information Design, and is passionate about hand lettering, typography, layout, sketching and photography.  Have a look at her instagram profile (@derikavol) and you'll see what I mean!

Derika's visual journals as well as her photography highlights all the wonderful detail that most of us tend to overlook when we see beautiful big landscapes or when we travel to new and unknown places. We are so often overwhelmed and taken by everything that is "bigger and better" that we lose so much of the exceptionally beautiful detail that surrounds us.  This is a theme that keeps emerging in much of her work.

She prefers to work in small and portable formats mostly. As a busy home-schooling mother of 2, many of her journal pages are done in her tiny A6 Moleskine Diary - which is a practice that she has inspired me to follow too.  She believes in a minimalist approach to art materials.  Derika's pages are often a combination of 3 elements only - collage, sketches and hand lettering.




She adores paper and prefers to use old labels, postage stamps, pages from old journals, vintage book papers, even the patterned insides of used envelopes as well as tiny seeds and leaves discovered during nature trips - which she loves taking with her family.

During the workshop, she will be guiding us through the creation of tiny journals made with recycled papers, and also introduce us to her unique style elements as we create our own visual journal pages.

Message me if you'd like to attend - and I'll forward you the details.

Here's a sneek peak into some of her wonderful journals:

2016 and "being busy"

I wanted to start my first blog entry of 2016 with an overview of 2015.

Then I discovered this unpublished post in my blog's "back room" - written in August 2015.

And looking back on the year, this is so profound that I feel it needs to be heard.

Unknowingly I seemed to have written this as a message for the future - for 2016.

August 2015:
I wrote, "I'm happy to say that my days of immobility in terms of movement and being unable to drive are now over.  Although I still have not regained full mobility of my right arm and shoulder.  Bone growth is progressing at a slower rate than expected.  I am able to do most of the basic day to day tasks.  But my year has not been as productive as I planned it to be.

WAIT...
Maybe it actually has!
Why do I measure success in terms of productivity?
And what does it mean to be "productive"?
Does the work that we do on the inside...how we overcome our own obstacles and fears, how we deal with adversity...not count when we measure productivity?
Is it just about OUTput then?
I'm somewhat shocked at my own values in this regard while I'm writing this.
Productivity seems to be weighed according to what we can measure, that which is quantifiable - that is how I've been conditioned.  Is that perhaps because external behaviour is visible and measurable and exchangeable for that other visible and measurable commodity that dictates most of our lives - money?
If we're physically busy, then we are seen as productive and successful, it seems.

BUT...
Today I'm challenging my own views.

You see, I've spent almost half of the year so far on my back.  But I got to read many pages that I've always wanted to, but never gotten around to doing before.  I had time to contemplate and think things through.  I had an opportunity to practice working, writing and sketching with my non-dominant hand.  I kept a journal - The Left Hand Chronicles - because I could only use my left hand and basic art materials at the time.  My lines were childlike but they were the most authentic marks I'd ever made on paper.

Left Hand Chronicles 2015 from Anel Stricker-Bessinger on Vimeo.

Deep processes of healing and growth were unfolding way beneath the layers of my skin.  Like the slow, deep movements of magma, water and tectonic plates under the earth's surface.  In time, some of those changes make it out to the surface of the earth and into the atmosphere.  The magnitude of those changes become visible to the eye only after they have actually occurred - sometimes months or even years later.

SO THERE...
Productivity is not just that which can be measured and quantified in terms of behaviour.   Success has no set definition either.  The criteria that define it are uniquely personal and very different for each individual.

I saw a wonderful quote the other day.
Beware the barenness of a busy life
Selah."

So here's to a wonderful 2016 and to living your own, unique brand of success.  

And may your sense of peace and contentment flourish as a result.
With love
Ax

Sketchbook Travel to the Gingerbread Houses of Dictionary Land

It has been two weeks since my last post.  My nocturnal studio sessions came to an abrupt end on 28 March when I sustained a concussion, broke my right clavicle and - confirmed by my orthopaedic surgeon only yesterday - 4 ribs were fractured in a horse riding accident. Who knew that by the time I write my next blog post, I would be lying on my bed for 6 weeks and using my left hand to edit pictures and write this post. Life sure is full of surprises!  So now I've been able to start something that has been one of my goals for this year - to digitally combine 15 years of travel photography and travel sketches.

5 of us were crammed into the ancient Toyota Land Cruiser of our trusty driver and tour guide Ahmed.  It still played cassette tapes! We spent 14 days exploring the mountains, the canyons, the sea and the desert of Yemen. A fascinating and arid place which writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith named Dictionary Land.  Because the Arabic dialect that is spoken here, is rumoured to be closest to the Classical Arabic that is taught by academic institutions today.  A country that provides you with the most authentic experience of what Old Arabia could have been before the modern age set in.

It is the place where Sam, son of Noah had settled after the Great Flood and the land where the palace ruins of the Queen of Sheba can be explored - according to legend.  And if you ever wondered where the world's old Land Cruisers go?  Well, they find an afterlife in Yemen - the ones that can still be fixed manually at the roadside by its driver, that is.  Extremely essential in this remote part of the world!

As for my travel sketches - there was no time for leisurely sketching.  We were constantly on the move so most sketches were quick impressions while the landscape flashed past our moving vehicle.

Slideshow: Sketchbook Travels to Yemen Music: Hijaz by Magamat (The Legend of Oud)

For more Yemeni/Arabic inspired material: READ: Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Wilfred Thesiger, Freya Stark WATCH: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen LISTEN: The Legend of Oud by Magamat Here is a beautiful Jewish Yemeni folk song by Noa and friends:

2 Girls, 2 Boys and 4 Journals

Last year I got a call from my husband's cousin, Aneska.

She had heard about my journaling and bookmaking adventures and had a wonderful idea.

She wanted to know if I could make a personalised journal for each of their children.

I'm a bit of a rogue bookmaker, you see - not an artisan at all.

I just love making them.

And I guess passion precedes (and compensates for) skill - it fuels our learning until we have learnt and practised enough, right?!

So of course I said yes!

She sent me a folder with images, anecdotes and documents related to their births, their names, their interests, her and Claude's hopes and dreams for them.
That way I got to know each one a little better.
And the pictures and stories culminated into ideas.

Aneska is incredibly busy - no rest for a mommy of 4 littles.

Yet she remains mindful of how fleeting these early childhood years are.

So she holds these journals close by so that she can take a few random seconds every now and then to paste down little hand drawn pictures, cards or write a short one liner or anecdote in their journals as life unfolds.

Ultimately over a period of 18 years, those tiny threads of scribbled words and one liners will become a detailed tapestry of story that would have been lost otherwise.

Last weekend I got to photograph them, each one beaming with pride as they held and paged through the books that are being written about them.

The youngest one is 18 months old - but even she seems to get it!

I left there feeling so inspired.  I felt that if she can journal her childrens' stories in the few random seconds in-between - so can I with my sweet little One.

And the looks on those little faces told me that those seconds are so worth it - for it tells them that their stories matter, that what they do and say matter enough to be cherished, that they are noticed and listened to, that they are loved, that they belong.

                                                                     

       

To make a positive impact in the world as an adult, you have to believe that your contribution is good enough, that it carries weight, that your presence here does make a difference.

Those seeds are planted (or not) during early childhood development.

I believe that journaling children's stories with them is a way to nurture this aspect of self esteem.

So thrilled to have had the opportunity to create these precious, precious containers for each child's story.  It will mean the world to them and their parents 30 years from now.

Sunset Colours and a High Five

This weekend, I had a very quick, very enjoyable play with colour to prepare this week's diary/journal, based on this week's challenge from
The Documented Life Project, which was to use at least 5 layers - and do a "high five"!
Earlier today I passed by one of my favourite clothing stores and the colours in the window made me stop, stare and memorise the combination - orange, candy pink, aubergine and grey.
While I was playing on the page, we had a heavy rain shower, followed by a perfect rainbow and then a glorious sunset.
The sky turned into luminous hues of lilac, pink, orange and gold as the setting sun peeked out just below the rainclouds.
So I just had to play with these colours!  

First layer - stencilling with pink, green and black blow pens.
 Then I started playing around with these wonderfully textured paper squares on the paper.

Second layer - Relief printing with embossed paper
 & distress ink

Layers 3 & 4 - Collage with various textured paper squares - and then - finger painting with pink and lilac acrylic paint

The remaining paint was scraped onto the left hand diary page with an old credit card

Almost done - my worktable says it all!

Add some orange spray ink, 3 numbers, pencil for contrast,
some blue gel pen lines and we're done!