One of the most difficult and elusive phrases for an artist to complete is “My work is about...” Making art is personal and intuitive, and often we don’t know our intention until after (sometimes long after) the work has been completed. It’s common among artists to question one’s direction and to struggle with defining what one’s work is “about.”

If you’re like most visual artists, you have piles of work stored away; some pieces are recent, and some you haven’t seen for years. You also have folders of postcards, quotes, article clippings and reproductions of other artists’ imagery, all of which have inspired you and contributed to your own development. And you have boxes of sketches and notes about ideas, which may or may not have come to fruition.

These items are invaluable. They contain vital clues about the evolution of your work, and can help to accelerate and strengthen your growth, especially if you bring them together in ways that reveal underlying themes and patterns. The key is to see the detailed and broad expanse of your output and influences from a period of years, and to see it all in one place. Think Powers of Ten (the classic film by Charles and Ray Eames), but with the added dimension of time.

Several years ago I developed a technique for translating past work and influences into a form that can, as an entity in itself, shed light on this continuum. I call it the Visual Reflection Notebook.

My goal was to locate the common threads in my work for the past decade. Part of my difficulty was that the work encompasses many different forms: graphic design, sculpture, installation, dance, photography and writing. I took a big chunk of disparate elements from my “stockpile”—ranging from slides of old installations to new photographs to clippings from magazines—and reduced them to a common denominator by making small black-and-white photocopies. Using a glue stick, I pasted these into a blank, 4" X 6" hard-bound, 110 page sketchbook, the kind you get at any art store. The sequencing was purposely random, as though I had shuffled a deck of cards.

The result was a single object that allowed me to view, in my hands at one time, years of my process and production. It also contained surprises: juxtapositions that revealed similarities of old and new work, influences of artists that I had forgotten, a quote that had new meaning when paired with a new image, and so on. Unfinished work predicted the beginning of new work that has been completed, exhibited and sold. This tiny notebook emphasized patterns and themes that, without these serendipitous comparisons, I might never have seen.

To date, I have made almost a dozen notebooks. Some of the images repeat in different notebooks, and the sequencing always changes. Items gain meaning based on their juxtapositions, and rearrangements instigate new conversations between one body of work and another. I leave occasional pages blank so that I can write comments. When I review a notebook, I often find new insights, which I add to the already dense comment pages. Each notebook continues to evolve.

I also use my Visual Reflection Notebooks as a sort of “workbook” in my classes and workshops. Many of my students are artists with years of work behind them, and they want to define their direction more clearly and uncover their own unique “handwriting.” The exercises for making notebooks always elicit discoveries. Some students have pursued new avenues, while others have renewed their commitments to themes that had been hidden or overlooked.

There are many ways to arrange the contents of the notebooks, and to use them by yourself or to show to colleagues for their input and critique. Here are some recipes that may help you to start your own.

Serendipitous juxtapositions
As I discovered while making my first notebook, random juxtaposition can help uncover unexpected similarities. For example, a double-page spread happened to contain one image from 1997 and one from 2004. My earlier work focused on inanimate objects; the later work included people. In each case, the major elements were characters. The juxtaposition made me see the ways in which the objects and the people were interchangeable players in a drama.

I also realized that I’m most comfortable working in series, using a central element that changes over time, often through hundreds of images. Now, feeling encouraged by this consistent and enjoyable pattern in my process, I can concentrate on developing the narrative.