JFJ at the NCAEA

This past weekend, Dave an I traveled to Winston-Salem, NC for the NCAEA annual professional conference where we reconnected with many old friends and met a few new ones. The conferences are always so invigorating, and they always remind me of the powerful thing that the visual journal truly is. I am continually awed by the passion, the support, and the excitement that the journal elicits from so many out there. We were very honored to even have the Executive Director of the National Art Education Association, Deborah Reeve sit in on two of our presentations. I think it speaks to the power of connecting with others.

Dave and I will keep advocating for the place of the visual journal as a personal, educational, and professional tool, for we feel that the journal is a revolutionary and life-changing form. We are grateful to all those who came out to one of our presentations or workshops, who shared their stories, and who supported us in anyway over the weekend. As long as we see the need, we will continue to put ourselves and our journals out there.

Next up for the Journal Fodder Junkies is a trip to Cullowhee, NC to the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT) in order to teach our fifth seminar. Seems like yesterday that I was blogging about our last trip there, but it's been over 9 months. We are looking forward to another great group.

And just so everyone knows, Dave and I are available to come to schools, studios, and art centers to present workshops on the visual journal. Contact us to see if we can work out details.

Thanks again to everyone and their support.

JFJ in the News

The above photo shows pages of student visual journals. The photo is by Dennis Grundman of The Northern Virginia Daily.

I was recently interviewed for an article in one of the local papers here in Northern Virginia - The Northern Virginia Daily. The article talks about students using visual journals at James Wood High School in Winchester, VA. Dave and I have done a couple of workshops there over the last few years - one for teachers and one for students. A big thank you goes out to Stephanie Woshner and Vikki Pitcock for organizing those workshops and encouraging their students.

Click here to read the story.

I Am...

School is in full swing now, and I am finding it difficult to eek out a little time to scan and update the blog, the Flickr site, and the Facebook page. But I was able to scan a few pages from Journal #11 yesterday, so I have somethings to share. The above page is the first page in the journal that I retired last year (I am currently in volume 12). As is my tradition, I started this journal with an "I am..." page. This page was started with an activity that Dave likes to use when teaching students, teachers, and workshop participants about combining words and images. He titled it the Challenge of Beauty, and it is an adaptation of Angeles Arrien's preferential shapes test from her book Signs of Life: The Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them. I like using this "I am..." concept as an introduction to a new journal.

In other news, Dave and I will be at the NCAEA Professional Development Conference in Winston-Salem, NC next week, and we hope to see some of you there.