Busy Fall

Dave working in his journal during lunch at the Brandywine River Museum.

It always seems that I'm writing about how busy I am, but this fall has been one of the busiest. So the JFJ Challenge has been put on hold again as Dave and I present at fall conferences and finish up the manuscript for the new book. I hope to start it back up in November or December, but for the time being there is just so much going on.

So far, we have presented for the Delaware and North Carolina Art Education Associations, and we are scheduled to present at the Virginia Art Ed. Conference in a couple of weeks. We gave a well-received presentation to about 65 art teachers from Delaware at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA, and we got to tour the museum which features a large collection of the Wyeth's work including N.C., Andrew, and Jamie. We want to thank Jen Boland for setting up the opportunity.

Dave at the Mint Museum in Charlotte

In Charlotte, we presented about the approaches, applications, and assessments of the visual journal in the classroom at all levels. We also presented a hands-on workshop to a small, but enthusiastic group. And Dave gave an update for his 100 Visual Journals for North Carolina Project.

But our travels and presentations are not over yet. In November, watch for us at the VAEA Conference in Roanoke where we present four different times. Our hands-on workshops are already nearly filled, and we are looking forward to sharing new ideas during two general presentations.

Dave sharing his journal during the hands-on workshop in Charlotte.

All through this travel and presenting, we have been working on the manuscript for the new book. We sent off the finished manuscript yesterday and will be tying up some loose ends throughout the week. We can't wait for it to hit bookshelves in 2012.

And if this wasn't enough we have Jerrt's Artarama's Art of the Carolinas coming up the week after the VAEA Conference, November 12-13, where we present two 3 hour workshops. On Saturday evening we present Visual Journals: Personal Mythologies, and Sunday Morning, we present Visual Journals: Compulsions and Obsessions. If you are in the Raleigh, NC area, we still have room in both workshops. We would love to pack each one.

That's it for now. I just wanted to get a quick update out there.

Upcoming Events

I'll be part of a book signing this weekend as part of the Waterford Foundation's annual fair. This annual fall festival is one of our favorites, and my wife and I try to go every year. The Waterford Fair is a celebration of the historical heritage of Waterford, VA with 150 juried crafts people, food, entertainment, and Civil War reenactments.

The Book Nook will be hosting signings by local authors all three days of the fair. I'll be signing copies of The Journal Junkies Workshop, working in my journal, and sharing my process with people from 10 AM to 2 PM, on Sunday, October 9.

If you are in Northern Virginia this weekend, I highly recommend stopping by the fair, and if you're at the fair, stop by and say hello.

See the Waterford Foundation's website for more information.

Editing

The deadline for the new new book is quickly approaching, and Dave and I are in the middle of some majoring editing. Meeting up halfway between Boone, NC and Purcellville, VA, we sequestered ourselves in a hotel in Roanoke, VA this past weekend to plod through the first half of the book.

We split the book in half, and each wrote six chapters. Although we both have read, reread, and edited our respective chapters, we wanted to make certain that one voice speaks throughout. Slowly we made our way through the intro and the first chapter. These two sections by far took the longest time, mostly because they were written when we first proposed the book back in March, long before we had the photo shoot, sat and discussed the outline, and before we wrote the bulk of the book. But we hit a groove with the chapters after that. We have two and half weeks to get through the other chapters, and are confident that it will be done. There is nothing like a looming deadline to motivate you.

But we feel really good about this book, and it's nice to work with someone who you are so in synch with. Time and again this past weekend, we finished each other's sentences and had the some thought or idea. And the vision of the book became clearer and clearer as we worked. We are really looking forward to this thing hitting stores next summer, and in some ways it is a much better book than the first - at least a lot different and more focused.

We'll the keep updates as frequently as we can, but we both have been very busy.