Keeping Notebooks: Artifacts of the Mind

Austin Kleon shared his year in notebooks, and I find myself inspired yet again.

I’m not as systematic as Kleon. I don’t create daily pages, I don’t have a notebook “system,” but I do have a couple of staples and go-to practices. I have a notebook I began “building” years ago with quotes, ideas, images, drawings, scratching, and lists. I glue in pictures and trinkets and fortune cookies and scraps. I put a lot of stickers on the cover, stuff I’ve collected from places through the years.

And I keep a journal. I’ve started to be a little bit more disciplined in this practice recently. My goal is to make journaling a daily habit. I use my journal primarily to process my emotions, to get what I’m feeling out there. If there is one area of my self that I sometimes keep hidden, it is my emotional life. I’m not always real clear on what I’m feeling, and journaling helps me work through that aspect of my experience.

I tote around a couple of pocket sized notebooks so that I can record ideas and passing thoughts, bit of conversation and quotes, stuff I need to take on later. I also like having my small notebooks handy so that I have something to hand my kids when they say they are bored. “Make me something,” I tell them.

Søren Kierkegaard‘s “authorship,” as he called it, was undertaken with the understanding that his writings would be read by the public, not only his books, sermons, and manuscripts, but even his journals. Portions of his journals were excised and burned in the fire. He discarded portions that were not for public consumption, that were not intended to be read as part of his corpus. His writing, even his journal, was part of his grand vision.

I’m not quite there yet. I don’t think I’ll ever go that far. But I am writing and creating while conscious that family and friends may one day read what I’ve written or look upon what I’ve made, doodles and drawings and sayings, the occasional aphorism, the more-than-occasional rant.

We Need More Oil Paintings of Sly Stallone

Bill Pruitt has given us a gift. And another:

Get a print here or here.

Cool Sand Art

Fantastic work by Andres Amador. Check out the rest.

I guess you could say this is a form of land art or earthworks. Here are other famous examples.

Ever seen Serpent Mound?

Motoi Yamamoto’s Salt Labyrinths

Here’s the artist’s website. I encountered the work here. This is awesome. Check it out.

Pop Culture Art – Sam Gilbey

I’m a fan of film and certain elements of pop culture, and Sam Gilbey has produced interesting and visually compelling representations of several cinematic classics. I came across his work here. Below are my favorites.

Back to the Future Delorean (licensed by Universal Studios and produced in collaboration with Fanattik).

Die Hard (licensed by 20th Century Fox and produced in collaboration with Fanattik).

Jurassic Park (licensed by Universal Studios and produced in collaboration with Fanattik).

Jaws (licensed by Universal Studios and produced in collaboration with Fanattik).

Prince Vultan (official Flash Gordon print produced in collaboration with Fanattik).

The Jurassic Park and Jaws prints make fantastic use of perspective and foreshortening. The Die Hard image makes me want to demand someone bring me my detonators, and Prince Vultan brings to mind the query, “Gordon’s alive?”

Flash. He’s for every one of us. Singing Queen’s “Flash Gordon Theme” yet?

Good.

And you’re welcome.

Gilbey’s website has even more cool images. Check it out.

Printmaking Magic

Field Notes has issued a new collection: The United States of Letterpress. I like Field Notes notebooks. I prefer Dot-Graph paper. I carry one in my pickup, Big Bad John. Occasionally I jot a thought.

This little documentary let’s us learn about the art of printmaking, and the artists who keep the tradition alive. It is very well done.

Cool Pixel Art

The internet makes it possible to discover cool art. Here’s a sampling of Pixel Jeff‘s work, from Taipei, Taiwan.

Van Gogh’s Ecumenism

I’m reading Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s Van Gogh: The Life, and enjoying every page. A year ago I took an art class with Chad Hines, who has an infectious love of Van Gogh.

Naifeh and Smith detail Van Gogh’s religious influences. His father was a Dutch minister. His work in London as an art dealer brought him into contact with Charles Haddon Spurgeon and his Metropolitan Tabernacle. Van Gogh was a close reader of Thomas A’Kempis. His depictions of the sower were inspired by his experiences in the countryside, but also by his father’s favorite parable. Before he discovered his calling as an artist, Van Gogh wanted to be a minister. During a period which brought him back to Dordt, Naifeh and Smith write:

Vincent spent every Sunday going from church to church in a marathon of devotion, ignoring differences between Lutheran and Reforemd, Dutch and French, even between Catholic and Protestant, sometimes logging three or four sermons in a day. When Görlitz [his roommate at the time] expressed surprise at his ecumenism, Vincent replied, “I see God in each church . . . the dogma is not important, but the spirit of the Gospel is, and I find that spirit in all churches.” For Vincent, only the preaching mattered. In letters to Theo [his brother], he described how the Catholic priest lifted up the poor, cheerless peasants in his flock, while the Protestant preacher used “fire and enthusiasm” to sober the smug burghers in his.
Inevitably these Sunday tours rekindled Vincent’s ambition to preach. At home, he began studying the works of the most inspiring preacher he had ever heard, Charles Spurgeon, and drafting sermons during his late-night study sessions. He regaled his scornful fellow borders with impromptu inspirational readings, even as they laughed and made faces at him. He tested everyone’s patience, even Görlitz’s, with interminable dinnertime prayers. When Görlitz urged him not to waste his time on his housemates’ souls, Vincent snapped, “Let them laugh . . . someday they will learn to appreciate it.”

Van Gogh later abandons his pursuit of religion, of theology, and of ministry. Following a family conflict, he abandons belief in God. I knew of Van Gogh’s disagreeableness and his declared atheism. I did not know about his early religious pursuits and that they were informed by figures like A’Kempis and Spurgeon.

But now I know. And so do you.

Roger Scruton on Beauty

I share this video largely to put down a marker for myself, to allow myself to stumble upon this again at some point in the future. I’ve read Roger Scruton and admire his work. He is a philosopher. In this video presentation, Scruton argues for beauty while critiquing modern art and architecture which, according to Scruton, represents a cult of ugliness. Scruton believes that we have lost touch with the meaning of beauty and have abandoned our quest to create it, much to our impoverishment. He seeks to persuade us to recapture something we have lost, to establish anew the importance of beauty, to inspire courage for those that might name ugliness in art as ugliness, and to encourage the creation of something beautiful.

Beauty can again capture our imagination. Art is no less art if it is ugly, random, purely provocative, and cynical. But if it is ugly, it should be named as such, and in its place beauty should be elevated and celebrated, lifted up as a model, and held forth as an example worth emulating.