Cindy Helms
artist ~ author
WoJo Gallery
The WoJo Series was completed between July 2018 and January 2019. For those of you familiar with my interview with the inspirational Colleen Story at WritingandWellness.com. the WoJo project follows from there and the love-hate relationship I had over the years with journaling. As I came to terms with the need for a drawing journal, over the course of four years (2015 - 2018) I filled six 8 1/2 x 11, 144-page journals. (Five of them in my favorite Flame Tree Publishing’s line of luxurious foil covered sketch books!!!). What I saw developing in these journals was my own artistic voice. A voice that included my emotions, my surroundings, my thoughts about the world, works I admired from other artists, patterns that attracted me… and a Cindy Helms style was emerging that I really was proud of. I saw themes, colors combinations, and compositions that were uniquely mine. I actually found the personal growth I thought I was achieving, or at least expected I would have achieved, in the decades of journals I had ultimately burned. There I was, me just being myself, in between the hardcover pages, and what I had to communicate was shockingly insightful, impressively mature, and truly beautiful. Amazed by it all I thought to myself, “WOW! Journals Rock!” and the name WoJo derived from this exclamation. There are many many more drawings in this set of journals but I selected 74 images that went along with the personal discovery I had found while immersed in the journaling process and reproduced them using colored pencils and fine art pens on 14 x 17 bristol paper. I wrote descriptions for each image and my thoughts behind them, but I prefer to leave interpretation open for each person to have their own experience with the artwork. In this digital gallery is a small sample of the 74 that are in the collection. Please send me a message through my contacts page if you want to share your thoughts with me on any particular piece.