Journey Books
privately commissioned work

I have been journaling and scrapbooking since the '80s when I cut up WordUp! and FRESH! magazines and glued them to my walls. I slowly transitioned my clips and scraps to paper journals and binders in the late late '90s and in 2010, I began digitizing my collections. By then, the collections were much more personal. Some of the photos I have date back to early 1900s and digitizing gave me the ability to better preserve my family's history. Additionally, I began to integrate personal entries with poetry, almanacs, essays, and high-quality scanned artifacts.

 

The first of its kind was the "Anchors" book. It features my family, BFFs, the folx who raised me, folx who inspire(d) me, Girl Scout badges, lists of everywhere I'd traveled or performed, letters from my father, recipes [...] : 63 pages with over 370 images. It took me about a year to complete. No longer satisfied with referring to them as *scrap* books, *journey* felt much more appropriate. 

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For 10+ years now, I have consistently deepened my digital craft and produced collections celebrating weddings, proms, individual toddler year books, and cultural pilgrimages. Each collection can range from 25-100 pages, including 350+ carefully curated images, designs, and stories. Much like quilting or song writing, creating Journey Books is my deep passion, therapy, and soul food.

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me, circa 1993, posing with one of my early Jodeci collages; gallery of various Journey Book covers from 1996 - 2022; video draft of a book I created for a Writing Retreat in Ghana, 2022.