Wanted: Writers, Artists

June 21, 2007 — -- In August 2000, San Francisco-based graphic designer/artist Brian Singer sent 100 hard-bound black notebooks out into the world, simply leaving them on park benches and in bars, cafes, buses and taxi cabs.

Two and a half years later he had sent 1,000 journals into the void, accompanied only by a set of simple instructions on the inside flap.

"Take this journal and add something to it," the instructions read. "Stories, photographs, drawings, opinions, anything goes."

The user was then asked to pass the book along to a friend or a stranger, and send an e-mail to Singer when the journal was full so he could arrange to get it back and share its contents with the world.

Now, seven years later, Singer is doing exactly that.

Chronicle Books has published a compilation of the artwork, musings, photographs and other entries from the few journals Singer actually did get back in the book "The 1,000 Journals Project" under the pseudonym Someguy.

"The general idea is that the journals would go out into the world and get filled up and then, at some point, make it back to me," Singer said. "In truth, only two have done that so far, but several have been sent back that were in mid-progress, 1/2 full, 3/4 full and those were the ones that we used to compile the 'best of' for the book."

Originally envisioned as a random creative outlet, Singer's project has turned into more of a social experiment than an artistic exchange. Entries vary from the intensely personal to the light and frivolous. Every page of each journal's 220 pages is different, and represents a new place, point of view and creative spirit.

"You get people who are using them as diaries and putting truly personal entries in them and then you get the people who are drunk at the bar gluing in the coaster and writing some rant about it," he said. "There's everything from photographs to stitch work, to actual sketchbook artists who get a few pages and do their thing. There's a wide range of stuff that gets thrown into these journals."