Kirkwood students start campus-wide art project

By: Emma Cutkomp

Posted: 4/16/09

Kirkwood Community College students have taken inspiration from a worldwide art project and brought a miniature version to the Iowa City campus.

The Kirkwood project plays off "1,000 Journals," a community art project in which an unnamed person handed out 100 blank books around San Francisco. The person gave the books to friends, left them on park benches and in bars.

The books included instructions written inside explaining the project and telling the participants to be creative and fill a page with whatever they want. The project eventually expanded as interest from others began to peak. The originator of the project was bombarded with e-mails and letters asking how they could get involved.

Tonya Kehoe, assistant professor of art at the Iowa City campus, described how her painting II students became interested and eventually found a way to get involved. "The primary inspiration was a book called "Journals as Art," written by local author Jennifer New. The examples in the book refresh my vision of what entries in my personal sketchbook could look like. From this book I learned about the "1,000 Journals" project (1000journals.com.)," Kehoe said.

"After learning more about visual journals, painting II decided to make their own version. We created six books, designed covers, added rules and distributed them to friends and strangers," Kehoe said.

The group is calling their version of this project "208 Journals," named after the room number of the painting studio on the Kirkwood Iowa City campus.

The man who started the project goes by the alias "Some Guy." The idea for this project grew from his fascination of what people write on bathroom walls. He originally planned to write a book consisting of photographs of these public scrawling and artworks but decided that a blank book would be a better way to get his idea across. Instead of filling all of the pages himself, he let everyone else in on the creative process. Turning this idea into a bit of an experiment, he decided to use this project as a way to unite friends and strangers.

Art major Hannah Weston said, "The spirit of the journal project brings a sense of community." She also said that she enjoys the idea of "an intimate sharing of a project by strangers."

The students are excited to get the campus involved and unite some people who may be reluctant to call themselves an artist. "208 Journals" is an anonymous way for faculty and students to put themselves out there and maybe inspire friends and others to add to the project. The class is expecting to lose a journal or two throughout the project but look at that as part of the process.

This project is ongoing. The students encourage anyone who finds a journal to make an entry and to pass it along and get your friends involved.