Project: journal

The dreaded self-portrait…argh! Someday I hope to not look at these and see my coke-bottle lenses, icky freckles, and the bags under my eyes from too many nights working late.

As the days grow shorter and I start thinking about closing up the garden for winter, my creative projects start turning inwards. I hardly spent any time in the studio over the summer, but lately I’ve been busy like a little elf at my workbench and I’m kind of loving it. Until now, I’ve been keeping my artwork and garden writing separate in this relatively new blog because I thought that seemed like the right thing to do. But the fact of the matter is, being an artist and a gardener are two things that really define me, and one is constantly influencing the other; why try to separate them? So from now on, if I have something to share about a creative process, I will no longer hide it away in a secret hidden page on this blog. Instead, I’ve assigned a new category, “project journal” where those kinds of posts can be found.

What is “project: journal?” It’s a recent assignment I’ve taken on (yes, I give myself homework) to try and break out of the rut I’ve been in photographically speaking. Like a bad haircut that’s stuck with you over the years, I feel like the way I take photos, primarily for my jewelry designs, has become so rote. The only way I know how to start “seeing” and re-framing shots differently is to break out of my comfort zone, and for me, that involves more photo-journaling, and, *gasp* the dreaded self-portraits.

I hate getting my picture taken, and I do not use that word lightly. Do you watch Friends? Do you remember the episode where Chandler is trying to have his engagement picture taken with Monica and every time the camera snaps his photo he makes a weird face? Yup, that’s me. I’m hoping that as I progress, I’ll stop being so incredibly critical and self-conscious and start seeing things from a more expansive, creative point of view.

The journaling portion of my assignment is to help me develop more awareness using photography to record what I’m seeing. I’ll also be using my actual paper journal more and I may share some of those sketches and thoughts too. Not every photo in the journal will make it here on Hedgerow Rose, so if you’re interested in checking in to see what I’ve been working on, I’ve made a button over to your right that you can click on and be redirected to the collection on my Flickr set. While of course some of my studio work may be presented in my photo journaling, I want to stress that this isn’t about self-promotion but about a creative process, and my hope is that as my photography skills improve, the garden related images I present here will, too.

EDIT: I’m making some changes to my Flickr account (and the content I share), so the Project Journal set isn’t really all that great right now. Sorry about that!