My Art Journal. Full.

 This is the story of a great big book that found it's way into a library discard sale many years ago (around 6).  It was falling apart, the cloth cover was so worn there was no way to tell what it's title even was from the outside.  It's stitching was loose and it had crumbs of who-knows-what squished between it's pages, and it was a rather irreverent history book on american manners and morals (at least that's what it said).  And so you can imagine that when a bespectacled sixteen year old considering becoming an art major picked it up, it's life was changed forever. 

They formed a bond, and you can also imagine.  The large volume sharing it's thoughts on strange times in history and a hippie-with-a-phd 's view on the puritans to the prostitutes of the gold rush, along with pictures and poetry.  And the girl in turn painted and drew and cut and glittered and glued her heart all over it's pages. 

 For moons, seasons, years it was like this, the girl grew up and went through life, with this odd journal open and holding it all.  The questions and strange answers, the quotes and beauty collected, the heart breaks and revelations weathered, inside it's cracked spine.

 Every book ends though, every story has a final chapter with a final page with a final word.  And sometimes it's sad, sometimes it's sweet, but often, as it was in this case, it is both.  So the girl said good bye to that lengthy volume of her life, with a love-filled thank you.  Thank you for lasting long enough to be finished.  Thank you for helping me grow.  Thank you for catching tears and dreams and keepsakes.  Thank you for listening, not judging.  Thank you for always being a reminder that I'm the same person, growing, changing, learning, but always still me.

I still find it boggling that it's done, I finished it in January, I think.  How horrible is that, I can't remember!  Oh well.  But yeah, it's weird.  It's been apart of my life for so long.  How I process and accept.  And it's full now.  Overflowing with memories that almost slip from between the pages, each one a story of it's own.
Here are links to other posts I've featured it in.  1, 2, 3, 4, I would have thought there were more, but apparently not!  :)

I remember at the beginning, when I started simply because I NEEDED to, thinking I wouldn't finish it.  It was just too big and clumsy, and good grief how would I ever have enough ideas for all of those pages!  But you know, after the first twenty pages, which time-wise was maybe a year or more, those thoughts never crossed my mind again.  It was just something that happened.  I never knew when I would do another spread, sometimes I'd do one a day for a week, other times it would be months in between.  I never planned ahead, it's probably the most organic thing I've ever made.  Each page just forming under whatever medium felt right in my hand at the time.

By the middle I'd look through the blank bit with deep curiosity of what would come next, what would fill them, both in color and heart.  As with any ending of something that holds weight in your soul, it comes with a feeling of loss.  But I cannot deny (nor would I want to) the irrepressible excitement for whatever might be next.

Love, Clara