[-journaling, art-]

Today the line between journal, sketchbook, memoir, altered books, scrapbooks, and assemblage has blurred. Maybe it’s time to expand your ideas and practices with regard to journaling and see what the possibilities are for you. Here are some thoughts from a favorite contributor, Cynthia Korzekwa and some pages from her books.

words and art by Cynthia Korzekwa

The Greeks invented the hypomnemata, a notebook used as a material support for memory. The Japanese invented Pillow Books, notebooks kept near the bed to write down observations and annotations. And who hasn’t, at one time or another, kept a diary, a record of personal activities, reflections, or feelings?

Journals, often, have been kept as a foundation for a book to be published and now artists take those published books and alter them. And what about scrapbooks and daybooks? All suggest that the inner self just has to come out and materialize itself.

The sketchbook, once point of departure, is now, often, arrival itself.

This is a cover and two pages from a notebook entitled:

THINKING ABOUT THINGS TO DO

When drawing calligraphic strokes, the inner energy passes through the hand to the brush and then onto the paper. This energy is manifested in the final work. I like writing my thoughts out by hand and not by typing them out onto the computer. Because I like the physical feel of writing. My thoughts are more easily synchronized with the pen as opposed to the keyboard. Does writing by hand as opposed to typing change the way our thoughts are processed?

I have many notebooks that I use to draft out my ideas. Once my ideas are articulated in this way, I transfer them to the computer. Then, once these thoughts are printed and archived, I physically obliterate the written words in my notebooks. The rapid and repetitive motion of my hand moving the pen is like a form of meditation and relaxes me.

Cynthia speaks for herself:
My name is cynthia korzekwa. I was born in Texas. My childhood was greatly influenced by our housekeeper. Her name was Fela. She was from Piedras Negras. I grew up speaking Spanish, eating bean tacos and listening to rancheras. Almost a Mexican. The first drawings I remember doing were done in my mother’s books. I did a series of scribbles in Webster’s dictionary. My mother wasn’t impressed. I think I got into trouble. But I kept drawing anyway. That is until I went to Catholic school. There they had rules about everything. Even about drawing. Stuff like: don’t draw to the margin of the page, don’t go out of the lines, don’t put pink next to red. All those rules made drawing a stress. Then I grew up and realized that those rules weren’t for me. They were for somebody else…..Some people were born to be foreigners. I’m one of them. I can’t be homogenized.
email: cynthiak at tin dot it
websites: cynthia korzekwa, art for housewives

You can see more of cynthia’s book work at: www.cynthiakorzekwa.org/books.htm

Cynthia’s other contributions to The PCQ:
Art Begins at Home
On Colour
See all of The PCQ’s articles on Journaling

Originally published in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations