Bring with you an old passport that belonged to you or to someone else...a family member, or a stranger. Turn it into a voluminous exciting journal, rich with your landscapes, colors and textures, and packed with personal imagery. Trek through your intimate geographies and your personal stories and make room on your pages for new landscapes. Honor its bearer's identity and its travels in the world. Be inspired by its stories and histories. Strip it from its formality by adding your own cartographic and biographical anecdotes.

Allow for playfulness and for the interplay between the concealing and revealing of visual information. Permit a spontaneous and sensorial celebration. Tap into the joy of "mapping you" with the help of gentle and fresh multiple prompts. We will do that to satisfy our undeniable need to explore our past paths and witness our constant onward movement, to discover and expand through tactile, sensorial, and honest creative gestures.

Our day together will end with rich voluminous passport journals filled with awe and wonderment, a warm nest of gatherings to be cradled in the palm of our hands.

Materials List:

- an old passport (yours, a family member's, found in a flea market, Etsy, eBay, etc.)

- acrylic paints (just a couple colors), container for water, paper towels and/or rags

- a couple of small paint brushes

- scissors

- glue stick(s) (strong)

- matte varnish by Liquitex

- lots of small personal images: photographs (original and photocopies), scraps of paper, maps, little envelopes, old letters and personal notes, meaningful newspaper clips, clippings of old journal pages, etc.

- favorite mark makers and colorants (pastels, colored pencils, etc.)

- clear tape (packing) and masking tapes (black, tan, and other colors of choice)

- three-dimensional (but flat) objects: feathers, ribbons, gift cloth bags, etc.

"I truly believe that the need to be witnessed by the self and by others is a human-core-need to be fulfilled by the act of creating. Therefore, a compelling part of my journey is the teaching of art making and visual journaling.

As a young adult in Israel, I had studied Fine Arts in an artists' village nestled at the foot of Mount Carmel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and later, in the Netherlands, Graphic Design at the University of Arts in the contemporary yet history-drenched city of Utrecht.

Now living by the beach of Southern California with my family, I take in all the magnificence of the landscapes that shaped me and of the visual languages I have acquired along the way. I keep an online visual journal titled "One Artist Journal" that is derived from my actual physical journal pages. It is now available in a published book form carrying the same title. 

After the "One Artist Journal" came "14 Artist Journals," my second book, depicting the journaling worlds of 14 magnificent individuals. I am very passionate about finding meaning and connection through the process of visual journaling."

Please visit me at:

http://oneartistjournal.com/

https://www.facebook.com/orly.avineri

https://www.facebook.com/groups/231822096967393/ (My FB group A Stand For Art-Journaling)