January 7, 2009

1000 Journals ¹

by Wendy • Headline, Studio Saturdays

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art was hosting a special exhibit, the 1000 Journals Project.  The exhibit was taking place when I went to see my family in December.  I knew I just had to see it since I have been obsessed with the project for several years now.

What is 1000 Journals about? Well, this is the blurb from their website: The 1000 Journals Project is an ongoing collaborative experiment attempting to follow 1000 journals throughout their travels. The goal is to provide a method for interaction and shared creativity among friends and strangers.

It’s such a super cool concept to take a journal, create an art page within that journal, and then send it to the next person.  In the end that journal could have circled the globe.  And some of them have.  It’s quite amazing.  I had signed up years ago to have a journal sent to me but the odds of getting one are not very good.  So I have resounded myself in making my own art journals and keeping them for myself.

When I first heard of the exhibit, I was thrilled because I would have the chance to see it since I was traveling to the Bay Area.  And while the exhibit was a bit smaller than I thought it would be, I really enjoyed going through the books and reading stories and letters that others have written.  Or looking at the artwork, trying to figure out the psychology of this unknown individual who created a page within the journal.

Each book on display gave me the impression that the pages of the journal were some how haunted or maybe they were a little bit sacred, because those pages captured bit and pieces of people’s souls and you could sometimes almost feel their presence.  It’s an incredible project and an incredible feeling to stand before pages and pages of life…life being lived…life being journaled.  Life just oozed from the exhibit.

At the end, there was a chance to contribute to one of the 1000 Journals, so I finally got my chance!  I may not end up with one in the mail but I had to travel to San Francisco to make my mark in the hallows of these journals.  I feel like I can finally check something off my to-do list in life.  I loved the exhibit and I was so glad that I had the chance to see it.

See things like this gets my creative juices flowing!  Gotta create something!