Two Years of Arts in the Cards and My First Art Journal

It occurred to me recently that my ATC group, Arts in the Cards, has been together for two years. I started it with Suzan Morgan; we had been in some quilted postcard exchanges together, then we discovered that we were both fabric designers, and both making small fiber art pieces for Art O Mat. We decided to trade ATCs similar to our Art O Mat works. That was fun, so we asked a few friends to join us in trading ATCs and the group was born. The other mainstay of the group is Janice Paine-Dawes, who runs our Yahoo group and the AIC blog. [Thank you Janice!] Suzan is no longer part of the group since she wanted to focus on larger works.

We are now branching out into doing 8.5" x 11" art quilts based on the ATC themes, and Marie Johansen is spearheading that project. With New Year's nearly upon us, I was puttering around in my electronic and actual archives looking for inspiration. I came upon a design that I think will nicely fit our next AIC theme--Two--in honor of our two years of ATCs.

While I was puttering, I found an old favorite design, the cover of an old journal that I had painted with oil pastels and acrylics. It was the first art journal I made, and I still love it. It has gold paint on it, which looks brown in the scan, so the photo isn't as magical as the actual journal cover. The color was also a little off, so I monkeyed with the colors in photoshop.

It reminds me of where I was about 10 years ago when I made the journal--super anxiety ridden, unable to work, a nervous wreck. I could barely eat, couldn't sleep, tried a bunch of meds that didn't really help, and was practically skin and bones. The art journaling and mixed media work helped me work through my panic. My artwork is mainly therapeutic. Even when other people don't like my work, it is significant to me. It is also really interesting to look back at older pieces and remember what was going on in my life at the time I made it.