So… how did this work?

A few days after I’d let Ed know that I was willing to participate in this project, I received a small booklet from him. It was made out of very thin paper, which was perfect to use for monoprinting. I had just learned how to make monoprints using oil paint from my neighbour-friend and made a few tests with similar paper to see if the plan I had in mind would work. After I was satisfied about the test-prints, I cut up the book Ed had send me, and used the thin paper to make the final monoprints. The texts are sentences that I cut out of an old fairytale book (Hans Christian Andersen.) Rearranged and brought together in a different order, the text forms a new story… I grabbed some wonderful, handmade paper from my stash to make a new book from and machine stitched the strips of text and the small monoprints to the pages. I bound the book with red waxed thread using the copic stitch.

[Cover and Back] Everything in its place!

I have what I know through my own reflections

I stayed at home

For this was a party of pleasure
I have eaten

Those who are poets can boil soup

Wine was drunk by the bottle

and all the people cried: “Hurah!”

It was a heavy night that i had to pass through

And the sun rose and set

and the little pot simmered

and the big pot simmered

and then it was put into the loft, where it covered with dust and cobwebs

Everything in its usual order

Ed emailed me, after he received my book, saying he liked it.
Hope you like it too!

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!