Agi De Simone

Transforming a response to a word prompt into an idea or ideas each day for 30 days and creating a work that reflects that response is both stimulating and challenging. Some of the ideas flow easily and effortlessly and others take their time to evolve. I love to look beyond the obvious and explore ways in which to express the response in a lateral way. 

Journaling provides me with an opportunity to expand my knowledge and skills, to explore, experiment, research, learn, and connect with the work of other artists. A journaling challenge provides the stimulus and opportunity to design and create works that are different to what I have done before. 

For this challenge, I decided to create a complete a stand-alone work for each of the prompts. Each is an artwork in-itself.

This resulted in the application of existing skills, knowledge and techniques, and the stimulus to explore, and experiment and apply new techniques. 

The theme of Transformation provided the opportunity to explore gold leaf, cold wax and oil; and create intricate hand cut collages. It presented several new challenges including which glue will hold together different papers and surfaces, fabric, and materials; the response of different mediums when used together; patience - allowing for drying and curing times; the differences in the way in which different papers and materials work together; and effective photography to showcase artwork for the Instagram Stories and Posts. It proved the opportunity to recycle materials and up-cycle previous works and revisit favourite ways of creating that I have not used for some time.

This challenge went far beyond converting a visceral response into physical form, it reinforced my love of learning, experimenting, and making small works, it provided a daily stimulus for creating. It was deeply satisfying and transformative.