Eric M. Scott - The Journal Junkies Workshop: Visual Ammunition for the Art Addict

THE JOURNAL JUNKIES
WORKSHOP

visual ammunition for the art addict

Eric M. Scott
and
David R. Modler

North Light Books
CINCINNATI, OHIO

The Journal Junkies Workshop. Copyright 2010 by Eric M. Scott and David R. Modler. Manufactured in China. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by North Light Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc., 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, Ohio, 45236. (800) 289-0963. First Edition.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Scott, Eric M.

The journal junkies workshop: visual ammunition for the art addict / Eric M. Scott and David R. Modler.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60061-456-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-60061-456-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Handicraft. 2. Scrapbook journaling. I. Modler, David R., II. Title.

TT157.S337 2010

745.593--dc22

2009039834

media

www.fwmedia.com

Editor Liz Casler

Designer Kelly ODell

Production Coordinator

Greg Nock

Photographers

Christine Polomsky & Al Parrish

METRIC CONVERSION CHART

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank those at F+W Media and North Light Books who had a hand in the publishing of this book. We would like to thank acquisitions editor Tonia Davenport for her initial interest in our idea and guidance through the proposal process. We would like to thank editor Liz Casler for all of her hard work and walking us through the shaping and publication of the book. We would like to thank photographer Christine Polomsky for her fabulous photos, sense of humor and love of great music. We would like to thank designer Kelly ODell for her unique look and feel in the design of the book.

We also would like to thank everyone who has ever come to one of our presentations, workshops or seminars. Sharing the journal has been important to us, and the amazing feedback from these experiences led us to want to publish this book in the first place.

Most important, we want to thank Dan Eldon and his family. We feel a kinship with Dan, and we are grateful to his family for bringing his story to light. Dan was the impetus that brought us to this point, and he has inspired us to document our lives and our own personal journeys in this world. Dan is truly at the heart of all this, and we are grateful to him, his mother, Kathy, his father, Mike, and his sister, Amy, for sharing his legacy. Without the journals of Dan Eldon, there would be no Journal Fodder Junkies.

DEDICATION

Dan Eldon

Eric would like to dedicate this book to Joanne for all of her love, support and understanding.

David would like to dedicate this book to the faculty and staff at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching for their support and encouragement of his scholarship and teaching practice.

Together we would like to dedicate this book to the memory of Dan Eldon.

Kathy Eldon

FOREWORD

In a time of impermanence, when Twitter, iChat and Facebook have replaced letter writing, perhaps the best way to preserve our own history is through journals. Not the stiff, staid diaries our ancestors kept, but living, breathing books filled with photos, writings and artifacts that reflect our lives as they are nowand more important, our dreams for what might be.

As a former art teacher, I started our children on journals when they were very little, bringing along crayons, markers and scrapbooks when our family moved from London to Nairobi, so that Dan, age seven, and Amy, four, could draw their experiences in Kenya. Dan covered his book in zebra wrapping paper and recorded his safaris to game parks, sailing expeditions on the Indian Ocean and explorations of the exotic island of Lamu. As he grew older, Dan preferred black artists journals to capture memories of our family trips to Israel, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil and India. He also recorded his adventures in Deziree, his ancient Land Rover, that took him across Africa, living what he called safari as a way of life.

I was fascinated to see how Dans journals evolved with his exposure to new cultures, artists and ideas. His books grew fatter as he added doodles and drawings, clippings torn from newspapers and magazines and then decorated them with splashes of ink or acrylic paint. Dan began to layer the pages like an archaeological dig, adding coins and feathers, snippets of snakeskin or swatches of cloth or leather. He interspersed the artifacts with quotations from poetry or songs, along with whimsical comments about girls, school and life. Although he let Amy share his books with special people, he was careful to ink over sections he didnt want anyone else to read and glued scraps of paper over private writings or drawings.

When Dan was nineteen, he led a group of fifteen students across Africa to deliver aid to a refugee camp in Somalia and carefully documented his adventures, including a love triangle involving his best friend. At twenty-one, he traveled to Somalia to document a little-known famine for Reuters News Agency. Dan returned again and again to the war-torn country as a photojournalist and added the horrific images to his growing collection of black books. However, on July 12, 1993, his life was cut short when he and four colleagues were stoned to death by an angry mob. He was twenty-two.