num_pages: 200
description: I began keeping a notebook in a serious way when I met my teacher Marilyn Frasca in 1975 at The Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington.She showed me ways of using these simple things  our hands a pen and some paper  as both a navigation and expedition device one that could reliably carry me into my past deeper into my present or farther into a place I have come to call the image world  a place we all know even if we don't notice this knowing until someone reminds us of its ever-present existence.I wasn't quite 20 years old when I started my first notebook. I had no idea that nearly 40 years later I would not only still be using it as the most reliable route to the thing I've come to call my work but I'd also be showing others how to use it too as a place to practice a physical activity  in this case writing and drawing by hand  with a certain state of mind.This practice can result in what I've come to consider a wonderful side effect: a visual or written image we can call 'a work of art' although a work of art is not what I'm after when I'm practicing this activity.What am I after? I'm after what Marilyn Frasca called being present and seeing what's there.This book is a collection of bits and pieces from the many notebooks I kept during my first three years of trying to figure out how to teach this practice to my students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
language: English
title: Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor
publisher: Drawn and Quarterly