Archiving Art

Advertising flyers and ticket to three pantomimesI I wrote in the 1990s.

I’ve been archiving my past. All the last 25 + years of my creative life from writing plays to making art in one form or another. While I have plenty of photos of past events, it is the written records I most appreciate. My thoughts, words and projects that have helped me evolve into who I am today.

The problem is though, I have trouble throwing things out. I have been on a cleaning rampage, starting with downsizing my paper drawers, to tidying up my storage tubs and burning old financial records from 20 years ago that have somehow accumulated.

Sorting through my creative output was harder. Do I keep the scripts from plays written thirty years ago? Or maybe just the advertising flyers for them.

The first play I wrote was a pantomime called Tales of 1001 nights: Aladdin. It was typed on one of the original Apple Mac computers at a friend’s house as we had no mains electricity at the time. The next two pantomimes I wrote on an old second hand laptop that I could charge up at another neighbour’s house.

My third play was based on the real life of a local woman who was an Aboriginal rights activist from the the late 1800s. It was called The Widow of Wappan. It had a booklet attached to it and I dutifully sent a depository copy to the State Library in Victoria for legal archiving. I’ve been told that it has been read by people researching the life of Mrs Anne Fraser Bon from Bonnie Doon, (Victoria) which goes to show that it is important to archive records for prosperity.

Which leads me to my dilemma about archiving my visual art. I have kept a copy of the most important prints I liked from my printmaking days circa 2008-2014. I don’t make relief or etching prints these days so its good to have some examples.

The next decision I had to make was what to do with all my handmade papers. I have bundled up small stacks of banana fibre papers in different sizes to sell but am keeping the large A2 sheets as I won’t be making this size again. The physical labour of cooking up large quantities of banana stalks, rinsing the pulp for an hour then filling up an outside bath tub with fibre to make large sheets, is too hard on my back these days. I’m opting for simplicity and accessible materials.

The garage shelves were now filling up with empty tubs, which led me to question whether I should throw out or archive my morning pages journals. They are not strictly art, yet they are records of my artistic life.

I started writing ‘morning pages’ in 2003 when I first did The Artists Way. For the first few years I wrote with a fountain pen as I liked the way the ink flowed easily onto the page. It was soon apparent that cartridges for the fountain pen were getting harder to purchase so I began filling up the empty ones from bottles of Quick ink. Very messy!

By 2013 I was writing with an ordinary ballpoint pen as I discovered when I looked at one of the journals from that year. The opening page was headed ‘LA airport’. I remember that trip as it was my first time travelling solo to the USA. I was going to Minneapolis to intern at a papermaking studio called Cave Paper. After that I was going to participate in a two week long paper and book making workshop called PBI or Paper Book Intensive at Lake Michigan.

Reading this entry reminded me that archiving the thoughts and ideas connected with my artmaking was probably just as important as archiving the work made. I scooped up the 40 journals and put them in one of the empty tubs and labelled it accordingly.

I’m thinking it would be great to do an exhibition titled All of My Days. I could take off the coloured notebook covers to exhibit, or put a square ‘window’ in them to show the writing beneath. Or I could take out some of the pages and make art on them to reveal a little of the writing beneath. I really don’t know yet what shape this could take, but it has led me to think I shouldn’t throw them out right now. They might be waiting for the right time and place to have their moment of glory.

Morning pages journals archived in a tub

First page entry in the 2013 notebook