books of 2025 - 1000 artist journal pages

1,000 Artist Journal Pages, by Dawn DeVries Sokol

(from the foreword)

Why journal?

• "Journaling for me is my way of adding to
  the pool of remembrance, the accumulated
  stuff that makes up 'ME' in the eyes of
  those who know and knew me. And
  though it may seem a little navel gazing,
  those words are my way of opening up my
  own brain and soul and saying, with a
  metaphoric hand wave to the future, "Hey,
  this is me!"' -Jason Thompson
• "My extreme visual journaling practice, a
  unique process that I developed and teach
  internationally, comes from a desire to know
  my deep and tender shadow places, to give
  them voice, and to heal or transform them.
  My journal is the container, soul home, or
  witness protection program, not some proving
  ground. My pages are a place of safe keeping
  and honor where I transform my inner enemies into allies; where my weaknesses become strengths. Like a soul map, my pages allow me to see more clearly and more deeply the path to the real me. I have been saving my life in an extreme journal since 1987, page after page, book after book." -Juliana Coles
• "To bridge the often enormous gap between
  brain and canvas. It's that in-between space
  where I am still creative, but I don't have to
  commit to a big piece or a finished product.
  Journaling gives me permission to be free, to
  use scraps of what's lying on my workspace,
  to play with pattern, to not finish a page and
  not feel bad. It's a reflection of who I am
  during that moment. Time passes and journaling is an incredible way to look back and see who you were and who you've become.
  (P.S. Date everything--even if you think it's
  not important!)" -Mindy Carpenter, September 4, 2007
  (page 8)
• "Perhaps it would be better to ask, 'Why
  jump rope?' or 'Why sing in the shower?'
  Some things in life intuitively bring us joy,
  and we're drawn to them, often, without
  understanding why. It would be easy to say
  we journal because it makes us happy, or
  because it's therapeutic, but it's something
  so much more primal than that. Deep down,
  at our very core, we're all creative people.
  And in a world that values profit margins
  over all else, journaling has become the
  voice of the individual... a sanctuary of
  creative expression." -someguy
  (page 9)

borrowed from the library, because i was interested in different types of journaling or scrapbooking. it contains journal pages from a number of artists around the world. multimedia.

i think it'd be interesting to just flip to a random page and spend time really absorbing all the details.

it's also always interesting to see journal entries from some 20 years ago that still feel so... i dunno, like it could've been made yesterday. dawn smith's entry 0806 & 0807 on page 247, under a collection of stamps, writes "missing my boy tonight... hope to see him soon." i feel i've written the same about my boy. 

some of my favorite pages:

entry 0043, by alexia petrakos. a collage of men on a factory line, with "i am not a factory" written above them. (pg30)

0051 & 0052, by amanda kavanagah. a watercolor map. (pg32)

0120 & 0121, 0122 & 0123, by wil freeborn. pen drawings with watercolors, words cut out

0713 & 0714, by rose rushbrooke. two quilted pages, one a yellow lion on a dark blue floral background, spitting out a red flower, and the other a soft pastel rainbow moving like waves across the page, with some rainbow french knots. (pg222)

0808 & 0809, by dawn smith. it's a page about cows that the artist has known. painted pages, a page from a book, clippings of cows and flowers, and of course, writing about cows they've known. (pg247)