Goodmorning sweeties… 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? It was major fun, wasn’t it… to create to the music, and what an overwhelming amount of submission came in every day. Thank you all so much, I had a fabulous week! To top it off, I will show you my pages one more time – as well as my finished journal – because there is a story behind the entries I created for the Top 2000 party. Here we go:
I bound me a little book to work in – I found a free stockphoto on the Internet, showing cassette tapes and since the cassette celebrates its fiftieth birthday in 2013, I found it appropriate to use that photo to cover my journal.
I like to work with a theme and in the week leading up to the Top 2000 party, I came up with all kinds of ideas but none of them seamed fun or feasible. (For instance: create a ‘found poem’ with every entry… I liked that idea very much but it would take way too much time to achieve.) When the official Top 2000 list was published online, I still had no theme so I decided to just ‘go with the flow’ and choose a fun and happy song to start with.
Techniques/materials: Homemade gelatin monoprints, letter drawing (title) and stamping with handcarved stamps (circles) and coloured with sharpies
#1882 Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour
When the first spread was done, I looked for a song to create something with for the second day of the party… My eye fell on a songtitle that seemed to follow the first songtitle quite nicely and an idea came to mind: I could go with the ‘found poetry theme’ after all, if I made the entries follow each other like a poem – forming a ‘story’ if you like… From that moment on, I choose songs for their title (and not necessarily because I like them…)
Techniques/materials: Pages from an old map glued to background. Painted with gesso and acrylics (used a handcut template to create the gesso ‘blocks’ in the bottom left corner.) Pieces of a gelliprint (filled the silhouette with an old map). Handwriting/lettering with sharpies,
#1533 Animals – We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place
With the idea that the songtitles should make a ‘poem’, I came up with two songtitles for the third day. I wanted the pages to be nice to look at if you view them seperately (after all, the number of the songs were different and so it should be possible to publish them seperately – with a little distance of each other and other art works/songs in between.) But I also want it to match as a spread, to continue the ‘story’… Here’s the spread I created:
Techniques/materials: Dylusion Spray inks. Different templates and a handcut silhouette (inspired by a photo my son took of me) Piece of monoprint (circles), dictionary page, cut out teksts, doodling with markers/sharpies.
#1502 Peter Sarstedt – Where Do You Go To My Lovely
#1488 Wham – Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
When you start to look at a list of songtitles, it is amazing how much choise there is in titles that form a poem. Really… I had difficulties narrowing it down to just two songtitles to work with! But the next ones seemed fun and happy, and I wanted the ‘story’ I was creating to be a happy and fun one… I ‘brought the pages together’ by continuing the dotted line on the right page.
Techniques/materials: Black/Blue/Purlpe acrylic paint, cut out photo of the earth, cut out pieces of monotypes (“planets”) spray ink and handmade template/silhouette, Dylusion Spray inks, dimensional paint (the ‘lines’), handwriting and doodling with white posca pen.
#1164 Beatles – Across The Universe
#1090 Joe Cocker – You Can Leave Your Hat On
I don’t like the next song, but the songtitle fitted the ‘story’ so well, and when I saw the title I had an image in mind right away. So I went with it. (Again, I added a dotted line to strengthen the feeling of continuation.)
Techniques/materials: Torn photo of the fall of the Berlin wall (found on the internet, original photo by Jean-Claude Coutausse), acrylic paint.
#709 Spandau Ballet – Through The Barricades
Most of you know, I had a rough year with a burn-out and all kinds of obstacles on my way… I’m doing better lately but I felt I needed to get it out on this page. The title of the Fleetwood Mac song just called for that (it is also one of my fave songs, so I really wanted to include it.) I painted the songtitle on top of my journaling (as it is rather personal/private) and the page came out beautiful!
Techniques/materials: Pieces of monoprints (for the back and border), handwriting (marker) and letterdrawing (black marker and white acrylic paint)
#500 Fleetwood Mac – Oh Well
There were so much songtitles I could choose for on the last day! I roughly selected 23 titles at first, and then started to eliminate. I first got rid of all the ‘negative’ titles as I wanted my ‘story’ to end happy. One title also gave me the opportunity to include an image of a couple… my beloved and I like to go for long walks and I found a beautiful silhouette of a walking couple. So finally, the choise was made and here are my two pages for the last day – again, they can be viewed seperately as well as a spread.
Techniques/materials: Gelatin monoprint, selfmade templates (silhouette and circle), doodling and letterwriting with markers/sharpie and text cut out of magazines.
#261 Queen – These Are The Days Of Our Lives
#104 Beatles – Here Comes The Sun
And here’s the ‘table of content’ which is the clue to this book… ’cause it makes a found poem!
(I see only now that I made a mistake in the names & numbers at the bottem of this page – Joe Cocker is missing! Oops!)
Here’s a more detailed photo (you can click on the image to enlarge.)
In case you still cannot read it – this is the ‘poem’
Magical Mystery Tour
We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place
Where Do You Go To My Lovely
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
Across The Universe
You Can Leave Your Hat On
Through The Barricades
Oh Well
These Are The Days Of Our Lives
Here Comes The Sun
And here’s the very last page: a plastic pocket to store the Top 2000 list.
The last weeks of December were very hectic and – like almost every year – a lot of things got neglected… like my other art journals. Also, my studio is a mess! To get there I have to wade through spiderwebs and layers of dust… spiders wave at me in the corner of the bathroom celebrating their own party and I absolutely need to spend some time on housekeeping.
Then there’s a calender to be made, administration to be done (my email inbox is overflowing!) and I also want to update my website and this little blog of mine. And there’s more ‘little things’ I need to work on, you know – the kind of things that don’t take a lot of time in theirselves but when you put it on a ‘to do’ list for a while, that list gets rather long! I call it ‘the loose ends of the past year’… and to handle and get rid of those things I decided to take a blogbreak. I did so in the last two years to use that time to ‘get to myself’ and get some work done – so it is becoming a bit of a January tradition.
I will be back in a couple of weeks (the plan is two weeks, but don’t pin me on that…)
I hope to be able to show you some new work then (I have a lot of ideas and plans for new pieces and art journals… and also my ‘Word to live by in 2014’ came to me last week and I definitely want to reflect on that in my new Chronicles journal too.) I hope you all have a good start of the year… keep your head up, keep the creativity flowing and see you in a few weeks!
Kitty says
Marit wat heb je weer veel prachtigs laten zien!
Marcia says
Those are some fabulous pages. My favorite is the magical mystery tour. Enjoy your time to catch up!
Lena says
Dit is werkelijk een prachtig Top 2000 journal geworden!! Ook heel leuk dat plastic mapje achterin met de lijst uit de krant!!
Een beetje poetsen ok maar ga dan maar snel verder met je kalender enzo… Ben heel benieuwd! Ik ga nu ook nog een kalenderbladzijde afmaken… (ben bij juni)
Michelle LaPoint Rydell says
OMG your found poetry theme is GENIUS! That is such an awesome idea, and each individual page is beautiful too! You continue to inspire me all the time my friend! Happy New Year to you! Enjoy your break!
Natalie says
Wow Marit, wat een mooie pages heb je gemaakt!!! Ik heb met veel plezier geluisterd, gekeken en nu ook deze posts gevolgd over de TOP 2000! Hoop dat 2014 een mooi jaar gaat worden, vol creativiteit, geluk én gezondheid, zowel lichamelijk als geestelijk! Veel liefs, Natalie
Carla says
You made a great book and love the found poem. I loved being part of this again (a bit to busy to do a lot of pages) and seeing all the beautiful pages everybody made. It was a great succes again
Caatje says
Wow! Wat een lading werk! Geweldig. Ik weet dat je van alles wil schoonmaken en zo (moest lachen om die spinnen, hihi), maar probeer ook nu even lekker rustig aan te doen hoor en tot jezelf te komen. Geniet van je ‘break’. Liefs.
~*~Patty Szymkowicz Magpie's Nest says
Sending January hugs your way dear Marit ♥…
Miss you
oxo