Goodmorning sweeties… and Happy New Year!
Are you used to spend your days without listening (and creating) to the Top 2000 yet? Or are you still having trouble kicking the habit of creating to the music every day? It was major fun, wasn’t it… and what fabulous submission came in every day. Thank you all so much, I had a fabulous week!
To top it off, I will show you my Top 2000 art journal spreads one more time – as well as my finished journal – and give some extra information with every page. Enjoy.
BEWARE: this is a long blogpost. You might wanna grab a cup of coffee or something, before you start reading…
In former years, I usually choose some kind of theme and picked songs that had something to do with that to create a page with… not this time though. I could not think of a theme so I decided to go with songs that I really like. I payed extra attention to the lyrics (as I still am that ‘text lady’ that not only listens to the music, but value well written and meaningful texts as well.)
I link each song (title) to YouTube, you can click to hear the songs if you like.
Cover
For my ‘Top 2000 journals’ I always try to make a fitting cover, showing images that relate to music of course. For the 2014-journal I thought about a picture of a flower power poster of some kind, you know what I mean? Funky colours, flowers, bubbles, seventies-fonts, something like that. However, while searching the Internet for such an image I found this photo of Alvin Lee (lead guitarist and lead singer with the blues-rock band Ten Years After.) playing on Woodstock… and I was sold! So instead of a colourful cover… it turned out to be this black and white photo on the front of my journal. (In fact, I like it so much that I am now binding my new Chronicles Art Journal for 2015 using the same cover!)
Index
I already’d made the inside of the cover (a cut out image from a magazine.) I create the index page after I’ve finished all the pages in the journal. The overall feel of the index page has to combine with the page next to it, so I choose spray ink in similar colours. I just sprayed some blue, red and yellow ink on the (gesso-pretreated) page and wrote the titles with a black marker.
Fleetwood Mac – Man Of The World
I love this melancholic song and the world that lies behind the words “Shall I tell you about my life” (after all, it is impossible to tell your life in a song…) I glued all kind of pictures, scraps of paper et cetera on my spread, and created layer after layer to illustrate the fact that a life has many fases and layers. I also stamped, painted, used spray ink and washi tape and handwritten text.
Paul Simon – Boy In The Bubble
This song is from the album “Graceland” (a classic!) and although it came out in 1986, the lyrics are still relevant. This song has that same intensity that it had when I was young. The ‘Boy in the bubble’ (David Vetter) was in the news even here in The Netherlands in the eighties, and I found it fascinating how a human being could only survive in a plastic ‘bubble’ like that. You can find the complete lyrics here.
Phrases that spoke to me and inspired me to make this page:
“These are the days of miracle and wonder… medicine is magical and magical is art, thinking of the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart…”
I found a drawing of a heart in an old medical book, copied it and photo-transferred it onto the page. The background and circles are painted with acrylic paint. I coloured some of the vains in the picture, and lengthened them with a black marker.
Crosby, Stills & Nash – Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) is one of my all-time favourite bands. They tell a story with each song and I love that you can interpret freely… so that’s what I did on this page! All kinds of images that cite to either the song (Thursdays and Saturdays – What have you got to lose? – Ruby throated sparrow) or that I found fitting with the song.
The Beatles – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
This song starts with the sentence: ” Picture yourself in a boat on a river…” (if you click the link you can read the rest of the lyrics while hearing the song play)
I went from there and tried to catch that hallucinating LSD feeling and put it on the page. The ‘hills and water” are pieces of satelite photos, torn out of a book. I tore a picture of the zodiac-sign “The Dragon to create stars in the sky. The brightly coloured ‘planets’ (circles) and spirals, contributes to the hallucinatory feeling of this spread.
Van Morrison – Moondance (The video with this song looks weird to me… I have very different images in my head hearing this song – no rain! – but it’s my prefered version of the song so close your eyes when listening!)
Ahhh… “Van the Man!” I fell in love with his music when I heard a song from the album “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher” (1986) while I was hanging at the bar of my favourite café… I asked the bartender what song he was playing, jotted the title down on a piece of paper, went outside to the nearest music store and bought the album!
After that, I hunted down his older albums too. I never get enough from his music, and especially like the albums “Astral Weeks” and “Moondance.”
I made a music-inspired ATC years ago that was inspired on this song. On the ATC I used a photo of dancing crane. I wanted to create a page with a similar feel so I used the photo from that same ATC to paint the dancing birds. The ‘moon’ is a cut out piece from a left over gelatin print. Other materials used are: acrylic paint, bister, spray ink, torn out paper and a white marker to write the text.
This page is in memoriam Jack Bruce, bass player of Cream, who passed away last October. Cream were a 1960’s British rock supergroup power trio consisting of bassist/singer Jack Bruce, drummer Ginger Baker, and guitarist/singer Eric Clapton. The band existed only for about 3 years… Bruce and Baker could not get along , they quarrelled all the time. Their volatile relationship included on-stage fights and the sabotage of one another’s instruments. The superband split up but, oh wonder, reunited for a series of four shows in 2005 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. We could not be there but my beloved bought the DVD of the concert right away and wow… those old men still rock da house!
So this spread is a tribute… I tried to picture the lonely and sad feel of the song by making a ‘silent’ (muted) page, without much colour. I used gesso, white paint and paper scraps. The black circles are fabric on fiber paper from a sheet I once bought because I loved the texture. The text (part from the lyrics) is stamped on paper, cut out and glued onto the page.
When I was young, my first boyfriend played albums of Pink Floyd and I hated that music! I found it too ‘psychadelic’, without any melody and it got into my head in a way I didn’t like….
Things change. I got older and learned to appreciate the music… in fact, each time I listen to it I find it better.
This song has some beautiful, poetic lyrics which I tried to catch on the page.
The book closes with the Top 2000 list (from the newspaper) tucked into a plastic bag that I glued on the last page.
I hope you enjoyed this ‘background’ post about my Top 2000 choises.
Now that the New Year has begun, I’m busy finishing the last pages in my Chronicles art journal of 2014, and binding me a new one to start afreash in year. More about that later, as this post is long enough. Thanks for stopping by!
phinner says
I love this new peek into your creative process! I didn’t know you had such an organized plan for your Top 2000 art!
I always pick a song that I like and then work the art from there!!! I’m thinking i might challenge myself to do an ATC (smaller space to create in) using songs/lyrics a day or lets be more realistic, a week, hee. Slowly getting my art mojo back this past month…
Happy New Year, Marit!
Elizabeth Churchett says
Thanks for posting all these–I like lyrics too! Someday you might listen to “The Song is Over”, by The Who and possibly Roger Daltrey’s most beautiful singing ever. My husband explained what was going on behind the song (part of Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse project), and that made me like it even more. Happy 2015 to you and yours! I hope it is calmer than 2014 was for you.
anne gaffney-iehl says
What fun to see all of your pieces together and to hear more about them! I really enjoyed participating this year and will hopefully plan better next year so that work and family obligations don’t prevent me from finishing. Thank you so much for hosting this party! I’m sure it is a lot of work! It is such a great way to end the year.
Michelle LaPoint Rydell says
This post inspires me so much Marit! I love how you make a special journal for the Top 2000 each year. I am going to try that for 2015. I also love your interpretation of each song in art. Beautiful!!!