Journal Peek: Hundertwasser in my Green MBA Journal
In this week’s Visual Journal Peek Show, I’ll show you some pages of the visual journal I made during business school with some ideas on how to work with an altered book as a visual journal.
These pages document the a-ha moment I had when I re-read some of the manifesto’s of Friedensrich Hundertwasser, an Austrian painter and architect born in 1928. I had been a fan of his since ever since I discovered a monograph of his work years ago at a used bookstore in Chicago.
I copied out parts one of his manifestos about ecology and creativity.
He writes:
“Nature, art and creation are a single unity. We have simply separated them. If we rape the creation of nature, if we annihilate creation is us, then we destroy ourselves.
Only nature can teach us creation, creativity. Our true literacy is in our ability to be creatively active…”
Hundertwasser goes on to describe his proposed peace treaty with nature which includes ideas such as tolerance of spontaneous vegetation, living in harmony with nature and becoming a wasteless society.
Among Trees You Are Home
is a poster (shown of right page) Hundertwasser created circa 2000 (the year he died), and donated to promote the Afforestation of the Negev Desert in Israel. This was the image that facilitated a creative breakthrough.
My journal entry reads:
“Last week I spontaneously picked up my Hundertwasser book which had been in storage for 3 years. Suddenly, my whole question about how the Green MBA was relevant to being an artist and a poet was answered.
Hundertwasser did it. A painter and ecologist who designed fantastic green-roofed buildings, who published manifestos about being a zero-waste society in the early 1950’s.
Re-reading Hundertwasser gave me a kind of permission to admit, to commit to my true passions again. Nature. Poetry. Writing. Art-making. Being an artist for social change. Hundertwasser did it.
I am inspired not to care what anyone thinks of me. Reading Hundertwasser helped me see all the patterns woven throughout my life. Ever since childhood, my passion has been for Art, Nature, Writing-all in the service of healing myself and the world I love.”
About the Green MBA Visual Journal
In 2003, I documented my experience of getting a “green” MBA by turning an existing book, called The Working Girl in a Man’s World (1963) into a visual journal by altering the existing pages and adding some of my own. I suppose it was a way of rewriting an old story (not so long ago, and in many ways not so different) of being a woman in business.
Some How-To Ideas: Transforming an existing book into a visual journal
Add some new pages: In the first page spread, I pasted in kraft paper and a photocopy of another journal page.
I collect leaf skeletons, and this one is from one of my friend’s houseplants, almost a whole page big. I pasted it over a map of my beloved Mt. Tamalpais hiking trails and towns. The pages were painted with Golden Fluid Acrylics.
Metallic tape is used to tip in the extra kraft paper pages.
Strive for Imperfection
I like to work quickly and spontaneously in my journals, so don’t bother with trying to be too precise or neat with my writing. I just get it all down in my own messy handwriting. If I had to take steps to make the writing look better, I’d never get any journaling done at all.
Extra pages from magazines. Using a glue stick along the crease in the page fold, it’s easy to add pages from magazines, books or other sources.
Visual Journal as Documentary
This is a quick and easy way to capture moments in time or current events. Pages that include the publication date and/or name provide an instant reference to where you are in time and space.
As the owner of a design and marketing firm, I’ve always collected adds, especially documenting the proliferation of green business ideas going more mainstream.
Adding this sort of ephemera in your visual journal can help document what you are experiencing in the context of history. In this journal in particular, I can see just how quickly the world of green marketing has changed since 2003.
All journal pages and writing copyright Lisa Sonora Beam.
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Howdy! I’m Lisa Sonora Beam, author of The Creative Entrepreneur. I teach people how to get unstuck and use their creativity to make a living doing what they love. 
