I am grateful to my friend Mary Ann for posting a link to this story on Facebook today.
Julian Guthrie writes in the San Francisco Chronicle:
“Starting in the summer of 2000, a man named Someguy launched 1,000 blank, leather-bound journals into the world to encourage creativity and see how art could connect people.
“The journals trickled back in from places as far flung as Iraq — reaching 40 countries and 50 states — and were filled with gorgeous drawings, political musings, disturbing rants, and poetic vignettes of daily lives.
“The journals, registered and tracked online, were eventually turned into a book, displayed at museums in San Francisco (at the Museum of Modern Art), Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Ariz., and featured in a documentary.
“More than 12 years later, the global art experiment has a new twist: The idea has now been adopted by Bay Area children’s hospitals, where young patients use the journals as a way to connect with other children going through something similar.
“Brian Singer, the San Francisco artist whose handle is Someguy, has been touched by this latest chapter in his social experiment.
” ‘I have heard stories of the impact of these journals, of kids opening up in ways they hadn’t before,’ says Singer, who built a website, 1001journals.com, to help others start similar projects. …
“Singer, 39, who grew up in Cupertino, lives in Noe Valley and commutes by shuttle to his job at Facebook in Menlo Park, where he manages a design group. …
“He remains interested in the phenomenon of sharing among strangers and looking at how to connect people through a physical artifact. Tangible items ‘drive connections in the real world,’ he said.
“There are still many of Singer’s original blank journals out in the world that may one day return.
” ‘They travel on their own,’ Singer says, ‘like a message in a bottle.’ ”
Read more.
Image: San Francisco Chronicle
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