Making Sense of Practice

Methods for reviewing your visual diaries

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37522/3at9g771

Keywords:

visual art, methods, visual diary, practice, research, practice-as-research

Abstract

This text is an attempt to articulate how I use my visual diary and to identify methods that may be of interest and use to other visual artists. Images pepper the text as insights into my broader practice and the variety of outcomes resulting from my own use of these methods. This paper offers an invitation to the reader and provides the methods themselves with short descriptive instructions. The paper concludes with a short description of how I overcome creative block, and the suggestion to consider the visual diary as a living archive.

Author Biography

  • Jess Day, Curtin University

    Dr. Jess Day is an artist, writer, art collections officer, and arts technician, who recently completed a PhD at Curtin University as the recipient of the Art in Conflict PhD Stipend Scholarship. They have enjoyed exhibiting locally and interstate, and has written for various art publications. Jess’ practice examines highly individuated preparedness as emblematic of larger collective anxieties that surround speculative futures and survival. Outcomes manifest as sculptural objects with pragmatic functions and highly constructed landscapes informed by fiction and popular culture. In the studio, Jess uses materials gathered from military disposal stores, building and construction, emergency preparedness, prepping culture, camping, and car culture.

    Jess lives and works on Boorloo country in Perth, Western Australia, where the land is rightfully owned by the Traditional Custodians of the land who never ceded sovereignty.

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Published

2026-09-29

Issue

No. 3 (2026): Parodyk virtuvę / Show Me the Kitchen

Section

Articles