I mentioned previously that I’ve been art-ing through all the inspiration from Secret Spring Break. I’m trying to write (yeah, um, start AND finish) my thesis this week (due 3/22), so I’m sadly not going to get to work on these right now. I want to print more photos, paint, draw, color, and feel all the feels so I can fill up the rest of this sketchbook (or at least go until I break it because it’s almost broken as is).
This first page is the collage I made in the hotel with some of the images I’d captured along with some printed ephemera I’d gathered. Prior to going on this trip, I’d collected thoughts from other sketchbooks and pasted them in this one. I often think in layers, and it made sense to me to paste old pieces into my new book so I could create new work from them. This page includes some thoughts on Kurt Cobain from last fall that seemed to fit right in with this trip.
Here is a second page of collage work that I did in the hotel. Again, more writing about Kurt Cobain. I watched Montage of Heck last fall and was hugely inspired by Kurt to make. He would often spend days at home painting, drawing, and writing / playing music. Most of what he made never made it into the public eye because it was not really that great. That attitude made me want to make things instead of sitting around and wishing I could make perfect things but producing nothing.
I should probably note that I didn’t like Nirvana when they were popular because I have always been weirdly trepidatious of popular things. Kurt, I met you at just the right time. Thanks for the inspiration.
I already posted these pages, but I’m posting again. These next few pages are sketches of forms that I found beautiful and intriguing in the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
Sometime during the week I decided to start writing down all the ridiculous things that people said. I’ve been working on my hand lettering and thought that writing quotes would help me practice. I did these in the van. Both of these are Alex quotes:
“Sometimes whatever doesn’t kill you … is just really really slowly killing you.”
“I’m a vegetarian, but I eat eggs because I’m pro-choice.”
Along with silly quotes, I started to record the advice given to us by our various studio hosts. This quote came from GOOD Magazine.
“If in doubt, put it into the world.”
This has become my mantra through working on my thesis (which I’ll blog about very, very soon).
This page is my favorite in the bunch. First, the quote on the top left is what I found in place of my Bowie tape that I’d left in Grand Park on Sunday. I found this quote on Thursday, and it seemed to reinforce the lessons that I learned on this trip. The “art is trash” piece represents all of the layers that I found that other cities would consider trash, but LA embraces (and I love this). The right-hand page is a creative-writing feels dump exercise. I’ve been using writing as an art form to work through random things that pop up from time to time. I’ve really liked writing and then covering with paint or marker so that the letters can no longer be read, but are in the background as
The right-hand page is a creative-writing feels-dump exercise. I’ve been using writing as an art form to work through random things that pop up from time to time. I make up characters or caricatures of people and write to them to get things out of my system. I’ve really liked writing and then covering with paint or marker so that the letters can no longer be read, but are in the background as a texture so I remember that I wrote them (and they have been cathartic). I have a letter I wrote to David Bowie the day he died that I’m almost ready to share with the world because it has helped me get through this semester. I had to try to decipher it last week and it was pretty tough.
Words of wisdom from Public Library.
This little snippet was from my KC obsession last fall, but really fits the feeling I got from this trip. If any of my friends had to pick one word to describe my Los Angeles experience it would be “obsession.”
The song “Everlong” popped into my head on this trip because of the lyric below. Coincidentally, I had pasted a thought about Kurt Cobain’s ghost on the following page prior to putting Foo Fighters there.
Speaking of Kurt …
Sometimes, for some strange reason, Kurt Cobain would spell his name “Kurdt”, so I adopted that as a persona to write to / write about last semester when I was in my Cobain phase. I was floored that I hadn’t really thought much about him before seeing the Montage of Heck documentary and that he became such an inspiration to me much later in my life.
I pulled up the piece that I’d pasted down (the prose / poetry / whatever you’d call this writing) and stuck some of my LA photos underneath.
I think that’s it for my LA sketchbook, but I have more ideas. I want to be doing that today, but instead I’m writing. Or will be very, very shortly. I used the blog to warm up for thesis today. Wish me luck.
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Have you ever visited a place that seemed to speak to your soul?
