Journaling's Different Approaches ~ Gathering Day

I arose quietly, do my yoga and meditation in my "Chicken Room" (the chickens just watched, by the way) and patter down to breakfast and ready for our first day of the "Expand Your Art Journaling" workshop with Elinor Peace Bailey. Today is Elinor's day and it's going to be jam packed!


Elinor presents her perspective and process in journaling (very different from mine). With Elinor, she spends a good deal of time and thinking gathering, accessing and discriminating from exterior objects or stimuli. So our plan for the day is first - - gathering!

We divide into two vehicles, Eli's and mine and we launch off to four different places from which to gather our personal expression.

First we travel to a charming historic Washington town, Camas, and a store with the same name, "Camas". Elinor had pre-selected this diverse antiques shop and we poked around endlessly. Personally, this was my favorite stop with old handwritten recipes, lace doilies and foreign postcards and music sheets. It was like pulling teeth to get me out of this store.
Next, we cross over the Columbia River, heading into Portland's Pearl District, en route to "Cargo", a fascinating collection of primarily Asian collectables and other bobbles. From giant Chinese furniture to eccentric cards to antique Asian bookkeeping bound books (yes, I got one for the unusual paper and writing to collage). T'was like leaving a whirlwind stepping back out into the blue sky day.

A slight jaunt across town, where we plan to lunch outside before slipping into "Scrap". We realize the park we'd hoped for was not there and set up my outdoor chairs (I had for tomorrow's plein air work). Just settling in to munch on our sandwiches and "C-R-U-N-C-H" ... we realized a large truck had side swiped a moving vehicle as well as Elinor's, ripping off the mirror. I did a later sketch of her approaching the wounded cars. We were distracted for near an hour and finally toured the store "Scrap".  T'was a store of donations of the wildest things - I even found some Letraset rub on letters there!! Honestly, I think we'd all lost much of our wind from the accident incident and decided to eliminate the next stop, "Collage" from our tour. We pointed the vehicles en route home to Elinor's.

Renewed when we all returned to our Vancouver nest, all set up for our creating and we settle in to create from our gatherings. Already ... it had been a full day ... just wait to see what ensued ...