Dear Bus Artist: An Open Letter

An Open Letter to an Artist I Met on a Bus in 2009

Dear Bus Artist,

The summer before I started ninth grade, my youth group did a "stay-cation"-style mission trip.

In other words, we camped out in the back yard of one of our youth leaders and did various service projects around the city.

We did things like painting and playing with kids at the Salvation Army youth center, working at an urban garden, and working with other local ministries. Each day, we took the city bus to a different work site.

For me, this was an eye-opening experience on many levels.

I had no idea the need, or the important work being done, in my own city!

Here I was, a timid, awkward freshman girl, hopping aboard a bus each morning and evening with a group of 20 other high school students. Have I mentioned I'd never ridden a bus before?

I was terrified of sitting next to a stranger, terrified of getting lost or missing my stop (yes, I was in a group; no, that did little to calm my fears), terrified that I'd make the wrong move and be mugged in the street.

At the time, I didn't realize these fears had a name: anxiety. As an adult, very aware of myself and my mental state, I can look back and point out all sorts of symptoms I had. As a young teen, I had no idea. I thought I was just a typical, if shy, person.

Of course I also had the normal teen girl fears, like not wanting to look stupid in front of my crush... Anyway, moving on.

By the end of the week, I was exhausted, probably stank from not showering enough, and was only slightly less terrified of the bus.

That Friday afternoon, we all piled on the bus and to my dismay, I was the odd one out. I was forced to sit beside a stranger (horror of horrors!).

This is where you come in, Bus Artist. The strange I sat beside was you.

As a child I had an unexplained fear of men, particularly old men. Well, all old people. And strangers. And sick people, and people who smoked, and people with facial hair (my dad was clean-shaven). Or people who were loud and rambunctious. I had a long list of fears!

In light of all that, I hope you weren't offended by my silence or my unwillingness to even let our clothing brush, though we shared a seat on a bus. I was a dumb kid, and you were an older man with a 5 o'clock shadow and the lingering scent of cigarettes.

But from the first moment, I noticed your clipboard and thick stack of paper. As we rode along on our jerky, stop-and-go way, I was intrigued to find that you were drawing on this makeshift sketchbook. I didn't want to pry, but I couldn't resist watching.

You sketched our fellow bus-passengers without a word. One, two, three pages, filled and flipped over the clipboard.

I would have never said spoken if you hadn't spoken first. I would have sat in silence the entire way, sneaking peeks at your sketches.

I'm so glad you spoke up!

You asked if I liked art. My response, still nervous, was less than enthusiastic. I admitted I liked to draw sometimes.

I wish I'd had the guts to speak freely, to tell you I'd been wondering about pursuing a career as an artist. I'd always loved art, poring over drawing books trying to absorb every word of instruction. I'd moved on from Crayola markers and crayons to "fancy pencils," charcoal, and ink-washes. I specialized in horses, copying all my favorite pictures in my horse books. Yes, I liked art!

You spent the rest of our bus ride showing me how you did gesture drawings. We talked about shading, and the direction of the light. Several times, you told me to get the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. I tucked that title away in my mind.

You asked if I drank or smoked, which I, being a sheltered homeschool kid, was somewhat shocked by. I answered "no" truthfully. You smiled and said that was good, and not to try those things. You said drinking and smoking could ruin someone's life. I wondered, but I didn't ask whose life they'd ruined--yours or that of someone you loved. I've wondered ever since... and I've prayed. Whatever your story, I wish life had been a little kinder to you.

As soon as I got home, I borrowed Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain at the library. You were right, it's a pretty insightful book!

I'll admit, I largely forgot about our little encounter until a few years later when I stumbled upon that book in a used book sale.

I opened the book, a hardcover, unlike the paperback library copy I'd borrowed years earlier. The spine was stiff from sitting unopened on someone's shelf.

Turning the pages, it all came tumbling back to me.

Your gruff but kind words, you rough clothing, calloused hands cradling your scrap-paper sketchpad. Your sketches, so expressive and full of movement. The way you explained drawing perspective, shadows, and keeping in mind the direction of a light source.

I was wildly glad that long-forgotten drawing book popped back into my life so unexpectedly, at a time when I happened to be feeling pretty frustrated and uninspired in the creative department.

I don't know if I thanked you for talking about drawing with me. I don't remember our exact conversation, if I said anything when we reached my bus stop. You removed the sketches you'd made during our ride from your clipboard and handed them to me. They are the drawings in this letter.

We parted knowing almost nothing about each other, except that we shared a love of art.

Looking back, I wish I'd asked your story! I wish I'd asked you what you did for a living, what lead you to sketch your fellow bus-riders, or when you first started drawing. I wish I'd asked you if you knew Jesus.

When I got off the bus with my friends, clutching the stack of pencil gesture drawings, I started crying. Weeping. I felt as if I had seen a glimpse of God, and in the most unexpected place: a 50-year-old artist riding a bus. I cried because I could suddenly see how much God loved you, and how much God loved me.

That was in 2009. 

Today, eleven years after that bus ride, I wonder where you've ended up.

What's happened in your life since that Friday afternoon? Do you still ride that bus route? Do you still carry your makeshift sketchpad of scrap paper?

Thank you, sir, for speaking first. Thank you for the book recommendation, it's a great book!

Thank you for reminding me that every person is a story, a poem, a sketch of dreams, mistakes, and memories.

Thank you for reminding me that art exists to bring people together. I pray that I may grow to become the one who speaks first, myself, and touches the heart of a young person.

Sincerely,

The Teenage Girl on the Bus

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse, Part 1: Creative Process

Wow guys, I've been so excited to share this with you...

For Christmas I received a sketchbook to send to the Sketchbook Project in Brooklyn!

What is that? Great question. At the time I was only vaguely familiar with it, myself, so I spent a few minutes on the google machine and checked out the details.

The Sketchbook Project is housed at the Brooklyn Art Library, an amazing library of sketchbooks from artists all over the world. You can purchase one of their blank sketchbooks (a little 5x7 blank book) and fill it however you like. When you send your sketchbook back to them, they add it to the permanent collection, and they'll alert you every time someone looks at it!

I heard about it a few years ago but never pursued information on how to join the project, and forgot about it pretty quickly, so it was a great surprise to open up the package and discover this awesome opportunity.

Coffee and sketching with my little brother!

Every year they have different themes/inspiration cues, but it's pretty open to interpretation. The few rules pertain only to size and a couple of paints (gesso and acrylic) that aren't allowed because they make the pages stick together.

I got started on January 3rd, brainstorming what I wanted to pour into the sketchbook.

As you know from this blog, I work with a lot of different materials and media. Charcoal, pen and ink, paint, collage. My first hazy visions of this book involved collages of texture, color, and folded paper.

Pretty soon I decided to make it a narrative. I took my cue from everything that's been inspiring me lately... Astronaut memoirs, sci-fi novels and short stories, and astrophysics-for-dummies books.

I recently read "Physics of the Impossible" by Michio Kaku, and I was fascinated by his explanations of the science behind some of the "impossible" technology in sci-fi books. Things like teleportation, hyperspeed, and time travel.

Another great book I read was "Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut" by Mike Mullane. It's a funny, brutally-honest peek into the NASA's space shuttle program. Mullane doesn't shy away from criticizing NASA management, but he also conveys his love for space-travel and gratitude for NASA and the chance he had to fulfill his lifelong dream. He's also very open about astronaut culture in the '80s, and his personal struggle with accepting feminism (working with the first American women astronauts was a big adjustment for a man who attended an all-boys school and went straight into the military after graduation!).

With the help of these and other inspiration-boosters, my little story grew as a series of images in my mind. I had a plan for the narrative. As I started the rough sketches, I scaled back my intense collage-pages and chose to make simple line drawings in ink. I wanted the images to shine, not the materials I made them with.

Whenever I begin a particular art project, I start with an exciting mental image of it, and work eagerly until I hit a roadblock or two and set it aside (for a week, a month, three years, it varies!). After some time stewing in my mind, the solution suddenly hits and then begins the feverish race to create.

The same process held true for this one.

Once the idea for this journey from Earth to Moon to Mars came to mind, I started sketching away, determining each scene and each step of the way.

The sketchbook had 16 pages, so I had 16 scenes to create. I was able to sketch most of these over the course of a few hours spent with my brother at my favorite coffee shop.

Later, I got out my transfer paper and transferred each image to the pages of the sketchbook, and started drawing with ink... and that's where the big roadblock appeared...

The paper was too thin. 

My ink lines showed right through the paper, and even bled through in a few spots! This was not going to work.

I considered my options. Glue pages together to make them thicker? Prime each page with thin layers of gesso for a more opaque surface?

Gesso was out, since it's frowned upon in the Sketchbook Project rules. Normally, gesso is an awesome primer for art surfaces, but in a booklet format, gesso could cause the pages to stick together. I wasn't going to risk that.

I knew rebinding the book with different paper was allowed, but I wasn't feeling it... I didn't know what paper I wanted, and I didn't know how to deal with the stiffness that comes with thicker, ink-friendlier paper. Inspiration fell away and quickly as it struck.

My Sketchbook drawings stopped in their tracks, I set the book aside and stewed over the paper problem for about a week... until one day I was at work and the solution hit me.

Paper cloth!

I first made this a few years ago, at the suggestion of my art teacher. I fell in love with the unique effects of drawing on tissue paper, stabilized by a layer of cotton fabric. It's awesome for wet media like watercolor, acrylic paint, and pen and ink, and you can glue or sew on other materials to create a collage! I immediately knew that's what I wanted.

So what is paper cloth?

It's regular ol' tissue paper glued onto cotton fabric. I use about equal parts water and mod podge, but you can play with that ratio for stiffer or more flexible results - more glue for stiffness, more water for flexibility.

The sketches are transferred onto the paper cloth, ready to be painted!

You can also layer in other paper, threads, lace, sequins, paint, or anything else you want between the tissue paper and the cloth. Here's a link to a blog post explaining how to make paper cloth and the world of possibilities for customizing it.

I don't quite know why, but I hadn't used paper-cloth since that one project in high school. I was pretty excited to try it out again, so the minute I got home from work I dug some tissue paper out of the gift-wrapping supplies, got a large scrap of cream-colored cotton fabric from my meager sewing stash, and got to work. Yes, I have a sewing stash - I mostly do clothing alterations, with the occasional pillow or baby quilt.

With my paper cloth dried and ready, it was finally time to cut it all to size and get drawing... and time for a serious overhaul in my vision.

For one thing, paper cloth is one-sided. I suppose you could glue tissue paper to both sides of the fabric, but at this point I lacked that kind of foresight. For a brief time I was all action and no thought.

It took mental gymnastics to do this! Each sheet had two
different half-scenes, except the centerfold page.

I had several large sheets of paper cloth, thick but flexible. Being one-sided, I'd have to use twice as much if I wanted to keep all 16 pages, and that was going to be one fat little book. I needed to pare things down to the most important images.

Chop, chop, chop - out went half of my carefully-crafted scenes! This was a tough process, but necessary if I wanted to use paper cloth and keep the book thin enough to be accepted by the Sketchbook Project.

After transferring the remaining scenes, it was finally time to get painting.

Wait... Painting? Wasn't this going to be simple, black-and-white line drawings?

That's where the second element of my overhaul came into play! When paper cloth came to mind, the project changed entirely.

My illustrations would no longer be simple pen and ink. These would be full watercolor paintings, with line details inked in at the end.

That's the thing with art - sometimes you've got to be fiercely loyal to the original concept. But sometimes, you fall in love with one element and the while thing morphs to fit. That's what happened here, and I love it!

All painted, ready for ink details

It's nothing like what I envisioned at the beginning, but this process of adjusting the vision along the way was a lot of fun and resulted in a more creative, organic book.

The end result? An eight-page full-color book, bound with purple thread and with the edges of each page hand-stitched (cloth sides together, painted tissue paper facing out).

Work-in-progress, stitching together the pages

Don't worry, I kept the original cover with its all-important Sketchbook Project bar-code!

Stay tuned for my next blog post, where I'll share shots of each finished page. I've taken copious amounts of pictures - full-page, detail, and process shots. I've also kept all the original pencil sketches, including the ones that didn't survive the big chop.

Since I'm mailing the finished book to Brooklyn in a few days, these pictures and sketches are very important to me. I have to capture it all before it leaves me!

I hope to see it in its new home at the Brooklyn Art Library one day, of course, and I'm excited to be a part of the Sketchbook Project, but I'm going to miss this little book. We've spent a lovely two months together.

-Cailey

Stars & Seas is 1 Month Old!

Cover image from Stars & Seas

My baby, Stars & Seas, is a month old!

Almost a year ago I started writing a series of poetry that would eventually become my first poetry chapbook, Stars and Seas. It took many hours of writing, revising, editing, arranging, editing, writing, illustrating, researching, editing, and formatting. Many half-panicked texts to my writing buddies. Many google-searches looking for the ultimate self-publishing crash course.

Finally, on November 4th, the book went live in the Blurb bookstore.

To say I'm blown away by all of your support and enthusiasm is a gross understatement. This fall has been an eye-opening experience, and a "well, duh!" experience, for pretty much the same reasons.

Knowing the incredibly loving, generous, and supportive community I am part of, I shouldn't be surprised. And yet, I repeatedly find myself marveling at the number of people who sent me pictures when their copy of my chapbook arrived, asked me to sign their copy, or asked how sales are going.

The "dedication," of sorts...

I suppose this comes down to Impostor Syndrome, the undercurrent of "surely they'll realize I'm not all that" in my inner monologue. Daily I find myself embarrassed by my lack of confidence in the genuineness of my relationships, but anxiety still tells me you all think I'm annoying and you're all waiting for excuses to drop out of my life. Shut up, anxiety! Of course, I have all this doubt, but I also know very well what it's like to be on your side of things, actively trying to encourage and support the artists, writers, and other creatives in my life!  Look, no one ever said anxiety makes sense, okay?

You can imagine my surprise last week when I received an email from Blurb, the print-on-demand company handling my book production and sales.

In one month I made the first $100 of my writing career! 

That's purely from book sales, and doesn't count a few dollars I've made with my Stars & Seas art on Redbubble.

As I look back at the other little milestones in my creative career, I find myself counting blessings I never would have imagined back in 5th grade, when I decided I liked writing...

For instance, my first published poem was in a fun little Christian teen mag when I was 18.

I just dug out that issue of Encounter to peer down memory lane ever so briefly. While I'm not so impressed by my writing, I am glad that I was able to kick of my writing career with 20 lines of worship, and thankful to Standard Publishing for accepting my work. I hope you sense the tone that set in the rest of my written work, because I feel it in every poem I write. Faith is a difficult thing, but no matter how my feet wander, I can't imagine the hopelessness of giving it up and striking out on my own, without God's presence.

Another blessing? Stumbling my way into a job where I receive writing inspiration every single day! I listen to audio books pretty much every day at work, and folks, that (along with a steady paycheck, awesome coworkers, a kind boss, and regular hours) has been a God-send. If you've never read a book, article, or blog post about ways to kick-start creativity and/or become a better writer, let me tell you one tip they all say: read more books. Ladies and gentlemen, Stars & Seas is proof that listening to audio-books also counts!

I was inspired to write Stars & Seas after listening to two different books about space-travel (Scott Kelly's Endurance and A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin). Since then I've kept a mini yellow legal pad in my desk to jot down bits of inspiration as they come. That pad was basically the first home of Stars & Seas.

A peek inside Stars & Seas, for those who have yet to purchase. No hard
feelings, I love you anyway!

I'm blessed to have found ways to combine my two great loves, art and writing. I've had a habit of weaving back and forth between the two as I grew up. I planned to get a degree in drawing or illustration, and instead I got a degree in English. I ran an Etsy shop for a few years, and closed it around the time I started putting a lot of effort into trying to get some of my writing published (a constant, on-going process; I just received another rejection email two days ago!). Stars & Seas was the first non-academic project that truly combined writing and art. I look forward to many, many more chances to share these two passions simultaneously.

Most of all, as I said at the beginning of this post, I've come to realize how extravagantly blessed I am by the community I call my family and friends. Your support has been firmer than any rock I could stand on, and every day I thank God for you.

All in all, the past few months have been quite a roller coaster ride, and I look forward to what the coming months have to offer!



Thank you all,
-Cailey

P.s. I'm still obsessed with space-travel and I'll gladly accept book recommendations if you know of any other awesome space books. Fiction and nonfiction are both welcome, just as long as it's interesting! I recently finished The Martian by Andy Weir, and earlier this year I fell in love with Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Maybe my next poetry book with be about Mars? Who knows!

Stars & Seas Details

Hey there, fam. It's been a few weeks since we last talked, and in that time I've been up to a whole lot of good stuff, as far as Stars & Seas goes!

All your amazing responses to the announcement of my little book turned me into an emotional wreck for about a week. I am so blessed to be surrounded by this community of friends and family!

Anyway, let's get down to business. I promised more details to come, and here's a whole big load of details regarding Stars & Seas, purchasing, etc. Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and questions; this blog post should answer most of the questions you've asked.

I'll start with the question on everyone's mind...

When is the release date?

Sunday, November 4!

That's right, exactly a month away. I can almost smell it! Can you?

 ...oh wait, that's probably the proof I smell... It's sitting right next to me as I write this.

Can I preorder? 

No. It being my first time through this process, I'm keeping things simple. But you can order the minute it's released, so be sure to reserve a few bucks in your bank account!

Where can I buy?

Link to come, fam!

For now it will be available exclusively at my print company's online bookstore.

How much will Stars & Seas cost?

$7. That's a few dollars to cover publishing costs, a few dollars for me, and a cute little book for you!

Speaking of publishing, who's your publisher? What is self-publishing? How does this all work?

My publisher is me, baby! Well, with the help of a friendly company called Blurb.

Blurb is a print-on-demand self-publishing platform. This means I didn't have to write query letters or pitches, work by anyone else's timeline, or have to publish and sell a bulk order of books upfront. I also don't have to print and bind them myself.

The way it works is that I wrote, edited, and illustrated it all, and formatted a PDF according to Blurb's specifications. A few nerve-wracking clicks later, and the proof was on its way!

I found Blurb's process to be pretty easy, and I'm pleased with their services and costs. I haven't run into any issues requiring customer service, so I can't speak to that end, but I've found their FAQs to be very helpful throughout the process.

There are so many options in today's publishing world, but it comes down to one main choice: traditional or self-publishing. And in the case of little chapbooks like this, there's a third option I like to call "super-self-publishing," which involves a home printer and either a stapler or needle and thread.

I chose self-publishing for a few reasons. I'd love to go the traditional publishing route someday! But for this project, it was important to me that I handle the entire process myself. I enlisted the help of a few good friends for editing, but that's about it. I needed to carry this baby the whole way through.

Will it ship internationally?

Heck yeah! Blurb ships to about 70 countries around the world, and also APO and FPO addresses. But if you can't get it where you're at for whatever reason, let me know and we'll see if we can work something out.

Why wait until November 4, if it's ready now?

Ooh, I was hoping you'd ask that question! Well... one of the poems included, Panic Attack, is being published elsewhere this month!

You can find it in volume 18 of The Healing Muse, a literary and visual art journal centered on the topics of the body, medicine, illness, and health. The Healing Muse is put out by Upstate Medical University, out of State University of New York (SUNY). Copies of the journal will be available for purchase online.

I've signed an agreement with The Healing Muse allowing it to publish Panic Attack first. Rights will go back to me immediately after publication, but until then I have to keep it under wraps. It's the way of the publishing world, guys. If you're impatient, just blame the ol' Panic Attack.

I've had a few poems published in various journals, and it's thrilling to get that email, "Dear Cailey, we are pleased to accept              for publication."

It takes hours to wade through submission calls, identify which poems to submit to which journals, fit all submission requirements, and finally hit the submit button.

It seems like they all have different format requirements... blind (anonymous), single poem or a group of 3-5, single document or multiple, address on each page, nothing longer than 20 lines, nothing shorter than 20 lines, Times New Roman or Courier New, I could go on... and there's tons of competition. But it's so rewarding to discover that gem of an acceptance in the middle of a bunch of rejections! The rejections don't really bother me now; they motivate me. But acceptance is an even better motivator, for sure.

What are some other ways to support you?

Great question! 

• Share with others! Share the purchase link online, show the book to your friends, and make a big deal about having suddenly become a poetry fan.
• Check out these Stars & Seas products on Redbubble! This design is a combination of several illustrations from the book, all original ink drawings by yours truly. There's more than 50 different items, including t-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs, wall art; even duvet covers. Personally I think it looks super rad on the pillows, the hardcover journal, and the travel mug.
• Keep in touch! Whether it's through this site, social media, or however we interact, let me know what you think about the book. One of the purposes of art is to engage in conversation between the artist and the viewer.. So let's extend that conversation!
• Most importantly, pay attention to the people around you. You'll never know if they're afraid, hurt, or feeling hopeless unless you show that you care. Be a listener, be a giver, be an encourager. We're made to be in community, not in a vacuum, but it's so easy for us to isolate ourselves when the world seems so dark and scary. Be a light.

Alright fam, that's all the questions I could think of to answer (with a couple of tangents on publishing). If you ask more, I'll do my best to update this post with answers so we're all on the same page!

But one last thing... I just want to say that I am blown away by your enthusiastic support. Absolutely overwhelmed.

I feel this weird mix of pretentiousness and teenage angst when I tell people I write poetry, so it's amazing to look at the number of page views on my announcement, and the reactions to my social media posts about Stars & Seas. It's really overwhelming to think about how many people love me and are excited to read what I wrote.

It's also scary, since this is by far the most personal work I've ever released to the public. This feels wildly different from all the art I've sold or shared online. It almost feels like baring my private journals to the world. I want to thank everyone who has made my community feel safe enough to do this... You mean the world to me. Thank you!

-Cailey

A BIG Announcement: See Cailey...Write?

Wow, wow, wow I have some exciting news to share and you all have no idea how long I've been waiting and how badly I've wanted to break the news!

I keep hinting about it on Instagram, posting pictures of fish drawings, and papers covered in editing notes, with captions vaguely referring to some project I'm working on... But I think I've done a good job of keeping it mostly on the down-low.

Do you know how hard it is to be excited about something for almost a whole year and not talk about it?

I did tell a few friends, and they got more than their share of all-caps hype texts along the way... Thanks for the encouragement and the all-caps responses!

Okay, have I built this up enough?

Have I given you a proper taste of what I've felt all year? Yes?

Am I just being mean now? Yeah?

Okay, okay. Drum roll please...

I'm publishing a poetry chapbook!

Stars & Seas will be released in the beginning of November! 

More information, such as where to purchase, will be coming soon as I finalize details.

Over the past year I've written, edited, and illustrated over 40 pages of poetry. Wrestled with Microsoft Word, googled countless questions about formatting and self-publishing, and read books on space travel and deep-sea exploration...

Illustration for "Song of the Ginkgo Tree," page 33

• Did you know space smells like burning metal? At least, according to NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent almost an entire year living in the International Space Station. He shared his experience in Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery, published last year. 

• Did you know the deepest known point in the ocean is Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench? It's about 36,000 feet deep!

• Did you know that just this year, PhD candidate David Nadlinger of the University of Oxford won an award for his photograph of an atom? It looks like a tiny blue dot, not unlike the famous Pale Blue Dot in space, also known as our own humble Earth, photographed by Voyager 1 in 1990. 

• Did you know a group of jellyfish is called a bloom?

These are a few of the things I've learned along the way, and they've all slipped into my poems in one way or another. This book compares space and the ocean, using imagery from those two realms to connect with and illustrate my experiences with anxiety and depression.

"Self Portrait," 2017. The Stars & Seas cover image!

Stars & Seas is about my first panic attack, which I experienced a couple years ago.

It's about my ongoing struggle to figure out how much of who I am is actually me, and how much is the anxiety which I've only recently realized I've probably had my whole life.

It's about the passing of my grandpa in April 2017.

It's about trying to be an artist when the art just isn't coming to me.

It's about coming to terms with faith and fear. 

Creating Stars & Seas has been an extremely therapeutic journey, and finally publishing and sharing it with all of you is a big, exciting, and scary final step. It's been a labor of both love and catharsis.

I hope you enjoy this book, either to take a peek into the life of the mental health-challenged, to hopefully find something you can relate to and find comfort in, or just to read some half-decent poetry about space-jellyfish. 

I love you all and I can't wait to share this with you! Like I said, I'll soon have more information regarding cost, where you can purchase, and other ways to support me...

-Cailey

My Top Three Inspiring Books

I'm an English major. I love books.

Hand me a book, I'll read it. Don't hand me a book, I'll take it myself and read it anyway.

The summer before sixth grade, I read books 1-5 of the Harry Potter series in one week. That's over 2,500 pages!

I have shelves full of books, crammed in every which way, because I like to organize by size in order to make the most of the space available.

I just love books.

So, it shouldn't surprise you that I take a lot of inspiration from books!

Today I'm going to share with you the three books which inspire me the most...

front cover, Random House 1989 edition,
cover illustration by Jules Feiffer

1. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (brilliantly illustrated by Jules Feiffer)

YOU GUYS. If you never read any other book in your life, read this one. It's a light, humorous children's novel that will have your mind spinning in ways you never thought it would.

Ever wonder what dwells in the Mountains of Ignorance? How exactly one "jumps" to Conclusions? Ever think what life would be like if we grew up instead of down, or wonder what arranges the colors of a sunrise?

This book will run circles around everything you thought you knew, everything you've taken for granted, and everything you've always assumed. 

Don't bother to read it unless you're willing to reconsider the way you think and make decisions.

Dang. It's just. So. Good. My mom gave me a paperback copy when I was kid, and unfortunately I was going through an underlining phase, so I underlined everything I deemed particularly profound (probably 85% of the book). A few years later I found a flawless hardback at a thrift store, and I was beyond thrilled to have a fresh, non-underlined copy!

front cover, St. Martin's Press 2013,
photos by Brandon Stanton,
design by Lauren Harms

2. Humans of New York 
by Brandon Stanton

PEOPLE: this book, and Brandon Stanton's blog, has slowly but surely changed my life. He photographs people on the streets of New York City, and shares little tidbits from their lives. A story, a regret, a hope, a brief statement. And folks, no matter what the topic, who the person, or what their story is, I'm always inspired.

Call me basic, claim his project merely confirms stereotypes, call his portraits uncreative (I read all these statements in a blog post I will not link back to at this time), whatever. I absolutely love it all, because I would never have the courage to walk up to a stranger and strike up a conversation like that! It's also gained a new importance to me in recent days, because many of the people Stanton photographs are immigrants. Now, their stories need to be heard more than ever before.

He's released a couple more books since this one, both of which I have yet to buy, but they're on my list. If you ever want to "restore your faith in humanity", look no further. This book is a a true gem.

3. Chasers of the Light: Poems from the Typewriter Series 
by Tyler Knott Gregson

front cover, Penguin 2014,
cover design by Rita Carroll

FOLKS. I've read some of Tyler Knott Gregson's poetry, mainly due to his partnership back in 2014 with the nonprofit To Write Love On Her Arms (read about that partnership here), but dang, son.

My sister and her fiance gave me this little book for Christmas, and I fell in love. Gregson bought a typewriter and created almost 1,000 poems on found paper--receipts, envelopes, book pages, etc., and it's all incredibly beautiful and emotional. I just love it.

Flipping through those pages, reading those poems, I feel so inspired to create. It makes me want to make collages, paint fantastic and deeply emotional self-portraits, or type my own poetry on a typewriter. Gregson's heartfelt and lilting poetry, combined with this fun mode of presentation, always has me ready to go create.

So that's it! The three books that are my go-to for creative inspiration. They may seem random, but they each inspire me in a different way. Tollbooth reminds me to refuse boredom, think outside of the box, and question my assumptions. HONY reminds me to listen to people's stories and believe in goodness. TKG inspires me to forget the eraser, put on my creativity cap, and just go for it.

There's a lot of ugliness going on the world. A lot of fear and hatred, a lot of protesting, a lot of people who are lost, hungry, afraid, and homeless. Let's find ways to look inside and look around. You and I can do something about the ugliness. You and I need not contribute to the hatred and fear, if we only have the courage and inspiration to show others what's in our hearts.

I hope you take a look for yourself, and comment below to share the books that inspire you!

-Cailey