This is another page from the sketchbook I started a few months ago. It has become a visual record of the the places and experiences that I would like to memorialize, or freeze in time. I write in a journal somewhat sporadically, and like most people it becomes a record of all the worries and frustrations of my day. When I go back to read over the entries from months, or years ago, I feel both ridiculous and a little sad that this is what I have as a record of that time. For me the written journal is a place to work out thoughts and indulge ideas, but not a place to store memories that I’d like to go back and revisit.
I’m finding that this sketchbook is becoming a place where I put the things I don’t want to go away. So far there isn’t a bad moment or a complaint, just the thoughts and moments that I want to keep. I pick up a flower, leaf, or other small object, and encase it in plastic and put it in the journal. I don’t mean to insinuate that this is an original idea; as we know an artist’s journal is nothing new. I’ve just never been so good at keeping them. They always start feeling too emotional and contrived, so I abandon them. In that way I suppose they become like my written journal- a record of things worked through that I’d rather not revisit. This time I began the sketchbook more like a scientific journal. Anything I write is in a voice of record keeping rather than narration. The drawings and the objects are specimens collected and entered somewhat systematically. Still, I think it turns out that what should be detached observations, actually make the best story.
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