Fall 2021-Winter 2023
Fall 2021-Winter 2023, a visual journal by Rachel Simmons
Fall 2021-Winter 2023
One-of-a kind visual journal bound as a leporello book, 2024. Enclosed in a wood box covered in cyanotype prints of snake skin and feathers. Acrylic, collage, vellum, typewriter, gel transfers and ink. Box dimensions are 9.5” tall x 6.5” wide x 1” deep. Fully open display dimensions of the book are 9” tall x 55” wide x 6”.
My visual journals are a space for self-reflection and material experimentation. Through a layered mixed media approach to drawing, painting and collage, I use my journals to examine and document my life experiences. On both sides of the leporello, the reader encounters entries about my life over the last few years as a teacher, artist and parent. One particular folio contains a letter to my daughter the night before she left home—for the first time— to spend a semester in Australia. Others were made during a month-long residency in a small village in Eastern Iceland, while another was made about the comfort of being home on a Sunday morning. I usually work in my journals when taking a break from other projects to help recharge and redirect my creative energy. The cyanotypes I used for the covers and box were remnants from a previous project about birds, a topic which occupies many of my other books, while the cover images of the beekeeper and the hive express my active relationship with my creative practice.