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Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself
"We are all facing choices that define us. No choice, however messy, is without importance in the overall picture of our lives. We all at our own age have to claim something, even if it is only our own confusion. I am in the middle of growing up and into myself. This book is my life in progress."
Spilling The Art of Becoming Yourself is the creative expression of one young woman's attempt to understand herself as she grows into adulthood. Sabrina Ward Harrison shares her private journal and art, offering us lessons in life and empowerment that resonate with fresh, youthful wisdom.
Written when Harrison was between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, Spilling Open captures the artist's journey of self-discovery with a powerful and courageous voice. This book is an intimate and moving picture of what it means to enter a contemporary adult world that is filled with contradictions about womanhood. Harrison reveals with tender honesty that, in spite of the women's movement, she has found more questions than answers about growing up female.
Harrison's writing and multimedia art explore questions about love, faith, growing pains, being true, peer groups, and identity. A truly unique experience, Spilling Open will help open your heart and your mind.
Spilling The Art of Becoming Yourself is the creative expression of one young woman's attempt to understand herself as she grows into adulthood. Sabrina Ward Harrison shares her private journal and art, offering us lessons in life and empowerment that resonate with fresh, youthful wisdom.
Written when Harrison was between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, Spilling Open captures the artist's journey of self-discovery with a powerful and courageous voice. This book is an intimate and moving picture of what it means to enter a contemporary adult world that is filled with contradictions about womanhood. Harrison reveals with tender honesty that, in spite of the women's movement, she has found more questions than answers about growing up female.
Harrison's writing and multimedia art explore questions about love, faith, growing pains, being true, peer groups, and identity. A truly unique experience, Spilling Open will help open your heart and your mind.
176 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2000
35 people are currently reading
3020 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 101 reviews
May 9, 2011
I am totally enthralled with this book. I am only able to breathe in bits of it at a time. My heart wonders how I might possibly be able to survive after I return "Spilling Open" to the library. At first I flipped through the pages to look at the eye candy of this book. I thought "just another art journal book - what's so special about this?" Then I started to read and examine each page. OH MY! This is totally how I believe art journaling should be. And I SO appreciate that Sabrina is not afraid to share her heart with the world. In very tiny print at the back of the book it says "self help". Absolutely that's what this book is about. "Spilling Open" may not be right for you. For me it is a perfect fit.
I think I may never mark this book as "read". I can see myself wanting to come back to it and back to it and back yet again.
I think I may never mark this book as "read". I can see myself wanting to come back to it and back to it and back yet again.
August 21, 2012
Spilling Open is a book that's composed like an art journal: mixed media art and free flowing thoughts, feelings, experiences. It's about becoming oneself (obviously), pain, love, living. It is a little angsty at times, but also real, sincere, beautiful.
Quotes I like:
- "Look for the dream that keeps coming back."
- "If I don't love those parts of me - the tucked in, sucked in, silent parts - I think it will be a very sad journey... If you're not yourself, who will be?"
- "I woke up wanting to go to Italy by car. Perhaps if I really drove fast enough I might catch air to Florence instead of typography class this morning. Sometimes I forget about the magic. Like the moon and red leaves and how the apples grow again and again outside my windows."
- "... because of the fear, we don't trust our life, our story or our magic. Keep out of your own way."
- "The thing that I've been noticing about myself is that I don't make it clear what is important to me because I don't want to lose the connection or seem like I'm too much work to them. But then I become too much work for myself because I'm not being true to myself. It isn't my job to judge what is TOO MUCH for them. My job is to be completely honest and myself and let the other person respond honestly with who they are and what feels right. I must not shift, alter, or hide myself in order to experience love - because that's not really love - that's when resentment is born."
- "Megan always reminds me: The world looks so different when you remember to be energy, not image."
(Note: Some of the punctuation and capitalization is different, though some is the same. Hers was free flowing and random at times and that would have been awkward in text. :D)
Quotes I like:
- "Look for the dream that keeps coming back."
- "If I don't love those parts of me - the tucked in, sucked in, silent parts - I think it will be a very sad journey... If you're not yourself, who will be?"
- "I woke up wanting to go to Italy by car. Perhaps if I really drove fast enough I might catch air to Florence instead of typography class this morning. Sometimes I forget about the magic. Like the moon and red leaves and how the apples grow again and again outside my windows."
- "... because of the fear, we don't trust our life, our story or our magic. Keep out of your own way."
- "The thing that I've been noticing about myself is that I don't make it clear what is important to me because I don't want to lose the connection or seem like I'm too much work to them. But then I become too much work for myself because I'm not being true to myself. It isn't my job to judge what is TOO MUCH for them. My job is to be completely honest and myself and let the other person respond honestly with who they are and what feels right. I must not shift, alter, or hide myself in order to experience love - because that's not really love - that's when resentment is born."
- "Megan always reminds me: The world looks so different when you remember to be energy, not image."
(Note: Some of the punctuation and capitalization is different, though some is the same. Hers was free flowing and random at times and that would have been awkward in text. :D)
June 16, 2008
Sabrina is therapy for the heart.
This book is chuck/chalk full of emotion. So truthful. So much meaning and deep feeling. Sabrina is an inspiration for all girls and women of all ages. To remember what it is like to be young, to be insecure and always questioning... that it never really goes away, even when you are older. To be brave and take that leap of faith no matter the fear in your heart.
She encourages us all to love deeply and courageously. Not courageous in the whole suits and armor metaphor, but in being vulnerable and opening yourself up completely. That is where the true bravery is. The guts to stand out, stand up and speak for yourself, no matter who you are.
Her illustrations in her books flow so well together. Sometimes choppy, sometimes smooth... she mixes in many mediums and collage. What strength to show such imperfections. For we can only learn and begin to love ourselvs truly by embracing all that is in us: our faults and imperfections coupled with our hightlights.
She is truly a beacon amongst this new wave of artists.
This book is chuck/chalk full of emotion. So truthful. So much meaning and deep feeling. Sabrina is an inspiration for all girls and women of all ages. To remember what it is like to be young, to be insecure and always questioning... that it never really goes away, even when you are older. To be brave and take that leap of faith no matter the fear in your heart.
She encourages us all to love deeply and courageously. Not courageous in the whole suits and armor metaphor, but in being vulnerable and opening yourself up completely. That is where the true bravery is. The guts to stand out, stand up and speak for yourself, no matter who you are.
Her illustrations in her books flow so well together. Sometimes choppy, sometimes smooth... she mixes in many mediums and collage. What strength to show such imperfections. For we can only learn and begin to love ourselvs truly by embracing all that is in us: our faults and imperfections coupled with our hightlights.
She is truly a beacon amongst this new wave of artists.
September 9, 2021
Let's just say I wasn't this eloquent at 21, although maybe after pruning and editing for publication...
February 20, 2011
If I had a checkout sheet for each time I have either lent this or had a student ask to borrow it -- well, I could unroll it like a long dramatic, albeit comic, scroll. As a high school teacher, I see it all, but the incredible disconnect that so many students experience on a day-by-day basis is easily addressed with this lovely book. No, you cannot just open it up and whiz through it and that is the delight. It is as convoluted as any human deserves to be -- we are yarn balls of convolution and, if care is taken, many times the unwinding to the little knot in the heart reveals a little nugget of gold - that opportunity to grow from a difficult time. Teens are delightfully complicated and they want 30 minute solutions. We were all teens once and I remember how everything was so magnified, so alive, so painful, so wonderful all muddled together because my filter wasn't finished developing. This book takes time to read and there is, on almost every page, an aha I feel the same way moment. Even as an adult, I hear the voice in my own head resonating. I have been so grateful for this book's wisdom and the drawings are so lovely. Young girls just eat this up and it sings for so many of them. Spilling Open, and Sabina Ward Harrison's other books up the ante for smart survival without smarmy "truths." This is solution based, but honors the "this is going to take longer than 30 minutes reality." In this time of fiscal responsibility, giant cuts in the school budgets, and other soul shrinking money based decisions, I find more sorrow at school because so many people are having a difficult financial time.Students are taught subjects, yes, but a good teacher listens to the whole student. Work is done on so many levels. We have forgotten the soul or spirit. We are forgetting what we really need to focus upon during our stay on this earth as alive and ethical humans. Spilling Open is a wonderful touchstone for taking the sting out of the hard world of what "they" might call reality - it is a real examination of real scars, and real red hearts held in an outstretched hand. I teach humans and this book has opened so many doors for invisible young girls. I wave a huge flag for Sabrina Ward Harrison. This book helps me be a better human and teacher.
June 4, 2018
Certainly an honest and open look at life from the viewpoint of a young person in her late teens, early twenties--full of angst and self-questioning and attempts at self-understanding.
Most of us can probably remembering feeling much the same in college.
First published in 2000, it was a ground-breaking book for folks who were interested in visual journaling. Now, I believe most of its appeal would be among young people who are still puzzling their way through all of emotions of that age.
Most of us can probably remembering feeling much the same in college.
First published in 2000, it was a ground-breaking book for folks who were interested in visual journaling. Now, I believe most of its appeal would be among young people who are still puzzling their way through all of emotions of that age.
June 28, 2008
"Sabrina is a luminous mystery, a carousel of feelings, lumps and discoveries.
If you could lie down with her journals, you would see genius.
That is genius in this book.
Yes she is young Thank God
We might get that much more fun out of her"
- From the introduction of SARK,
author / artist of Succulent Wild Woman
Sabrina Harrison was very young at the time she wrote this and she was dared to be different, to be real, to be totally unconventional and out of the box - to really free herself. And all along the way was pushed by the same people who held her hand to help her finish this book.
This is a terrific book for any lover of art and even more spectacular for art students.
If you could lie down with her journals, you would see genius.
That is genius in this book.
Yes she is young Thank God
We might get that much more fun out of her"
- From the introduction of SARK,
author / artist of Succulent Wild Woman
Sabrina Harrison was very young at the time she wrote this and she was dared to be different, to be real, to be totally unconventional and out of the box - to really free herself. And all along the way was pushed by the same people who held her hand to help her finish this book.
This is a terrific book for any lover of art and even more spectacular for art students.
November 20, 2008
i think i would have really loved this book ten years ago. a lot of the content really rings true of those awkward, formative years when you are finally on your own and not really sure what to think of yourself. but i found myself wishing that it wasn't so repetitive, and i also would have liked to see more original musings and thoughts vs. the quoting of other works, but hey, it works for her. again, ten years ago, i probably would have been completely enamored and inspired.
March 16, 2014
I was a bit skeptical in the beginning. The foreword both put me on guard and intrigued me. One of the most beautiful things about this book is how she is a horrible speller. :) The only reason I make note of this is because, truth be told, I'm a super speller and until some years ago, it would bother me when people misspelled things. Anyway, awesome book!
July 24, 2007
I saw this book at a bookstore over the weekend.. I NEED THIS BOOK.. it's a personal art journal/diary of the author.. so beautiful! I loved what I read, what I saw.. this book is so beautiful... try and get it if you can!!!!!
September 9, 2007
Sabrina Ward Harrison is my inspiration!
The collage works of painting, photos, text in this book are beautiful.
It is usually found in the self-help section at book stores, but should also be in the art section.
Great visual experience!
The collage works of painting, photos, text in this book are beautiful.
It is usually found in the self-help section at book stores, but should also be in the art section.
Great visual experience!
September 14, 2014
Wonderful book. Wish I had read this when I was 20's. Lot's of wisdom for a young woman. Now here I am 40+ years later, still loving it a nd the messages.
July 18, 2019
a forever fave. i read this when i was 19, and again when 19 was half my life ago. it's messy & repetitive & glorious, which suited my adhd brain just as well back then as now at age 38. swirls of paint, ink-scribbles, photos, found-image collage, safety pins, fragments & friendship tales. grateful for the truthful way she talks about body image (inc. her skin) & fully celebrates her friendships - including with her folks. i felt the beauty of her handwriting even more on this second read - it has a lost-art feel in the digital age. i found sabrina ward harrison & dan eldon around the same time; so this book is twinned with 'the journey is the destination'. here's to another 19-year journey, seeing where we get to.
September 3, 2021
This is a book I think I'll look at and try to read. The handwritten words are a bit hard to read. It's like the printer tried to fit it in a smaller book and it's not working. I do think the book is "dated" for sure. It is colorful, and I'm sure heartfelt, but there needed to be a This is where I am now in my life page. If she was 24 when the book came out, tell us about it. This book was recommended by another author in a book I was reading. The suggestion being one could see how she tied using color to her moods. Well, it looks like anger mangement to me. Finding out who she was with the sweetsie little faces..is this her? I'm sharing with someone else before I delve in, if I can.
September 10, 2023
This book has so much to offer. It is art journaling in its truest form. It is filled with art, photos, color, quotes, images, feelings. It is honest and open. It is the angst and discomfort so many feel growing into an adult. It expresses struggling with accepting who we are mixed in with heart ache, uncertainty, love and honesty. I say "we" though it is the author's own thoughts and feelings I can see my own thoughts and feelings of long ago years reflected in these pages. In my humble opinion it's a good book for anyone in the teen years to pick up and read. It's always good as a person - teen or otherwise - to know someone has the same thoughts/ struggles. And it's very good to read the words of wisdom and encouragement mixed in with all of the art.
February 15, 2022
Rereading this book was as moving as the first time I read it back when it came out. Sabrina captures the angst of becoming a woman in our American culture. Written when she was a college student going through a breakup with her boyfriend, she expresses raw emotion, self doubt, struggles with body image, etc. that most women of any age can easily identify with. The art accompanying her words colors them with emotions and things not easily expressed.
April 22, 2023
How do you rate someone’s journal? It’s an interesting window into both her life and her art, undoing some of the ways she’s been taught to look at other women and judge herself less, trying to find herself as a young person, to find love and connection and so see herself clearly. The artwork throughout adds beautifully to the text, it’s a wonderfully personal experience - the reason I read zines in a gorgeous art book, yes please.
August 26, 2022
I am a fan of journals people produce. The images are stimulating and sometimes inspiring. The narratives can be edifying too. When I was much younger, I would probably have been quite enamored of this book. I enjoyed it, but will pass it on to a younger woman...someone who is in the stage of life where they experience angst, drama and myriad other feelings as if they invented them. Enjoy.
Read
August 7, 2022It seems unfair to give a rating to someone else's art journal. The art is beautiful. The ideas are worthy of consideration. I really like the look of the words in pencil. Thumbs up but I won't give stars.
March 15, 2024
And at the same age I am now! what a beautiful open and honest comparison and journal. interesting how differently creative people can view their lives. didn't like the paper as much as her journal (too shiny)
March 27, 2018
POPSUGAR Reading Challenge Prompt G: A book by an author with the same first or last name as you
July 10, 2019
One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. How thrilling and breathtaking to be caught up in Sabrina Wards Harrison’s mind and feel so much at home. This piece is a treasure and a gift.
Read
September 8, 2021Reread this after reading it first when I was 19. Oh, baby, what a nostalgia bomb. <3
February 11, 2022
Beautiful book. I loved every page
December 27, 2022
Reread - loved this in high school and it seems less relevant now but still v beautiful.
June 6, 2024
One of the most inspiring books I own. Love it so much!
April 15, 2025
The way you look at me makes my breath hitch. Let's rewrite the script for tonight, with a touch more... playful fire in every glance.
September 21, 2020
The social media on this book is just stunning.I don't know how Sabrina can be so generous to let so many randoms inside her life. I guess if it helps people it is amazing. My art teacher Kasia Avery suggested this journal style format as a fabulous use of journaling. But I have a feeling it was more about the content. It is a lovely expression of Sabrina's youth and I only wish I had kept a diary such as this with little pieces of bits and bobs from my youth. Having said that it probably would have gone with the rest of the flotsam and jetsam in my life. I was really looking for a current style mixed media journal rather than a past diary type journal so I guess for that reason I was disappointed. I didn't feel that I wanted to read it - it is a private reflection. So I was somewhat disappointed more because of the way I came into this book and my expectations. As an idea I think it would be great to do in one's late youth.
July 28, 2015
I still remember how I felt when I first laid my hands on “Spilling Open” by Sabrina Ward Harrison. Hypnotized by its colors, I let the continuous flow of handwritten words wash over me. It felt like I was going through someone’s secret journal, and every time a new page would call out to me:
This is the map, find the treasure.
“Spilling Open” is a young woman’s adventure to live her life out loud, to belong to herself, to claim her own magic. Her sketches, photos, and paintings created over a period of several years form a beautiful tapestry for her journal entries sprinkled with inspiring quotes from May Sarton, Henry Miller, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Rainer Maria Rilke to name my favorites.
Now that I am holding Sabrina’s book in my hands again after so long, it feels very different to me. I see beyond the visible, the beautiful mix of images and writing on the pages, to the invisible intention at the heart of her book.
Who am I? Am I good enough as is? Can I be okay with the unknown, the unanswered questions, the mystery of Life, and my place in it all?
If before, it was her questions that sparked my own search for answers, now I understand that there are no answers. There is no treasure to be found. Sabrina’s personal quest is not a map, but a window through which we witness her stumbles, losses, insights, and her faith. We move from page to page and witness. We know that on the next page everything will change for her. We see how the suffering leads to love again. Or how feeling inspired will turn to self-doubt again. We have hindsight reading her finished book, something she didn’t have when writing it.
“I want to be more and more myself as ridiculous as that may sound.”
- Henry Miller
We witness Sabrina moving forward in spite of her confusion and unanswered questions, and this is her gift. Her book is a gift of perspective. Not because she had perspective when she wrote those pages, but precisely because she felt lost so many times. Her intention to stay true to herself and stay open to Life was a daily commitment. She dealt with her feelings head-on as they came, reminding us that Life is a moment-to-moment experience. The only thing we can be sure of is that everything will change. The adventure lies in accepting it all, as is, no matter how messy it gets. Our lives are works of art in progress, and Life is in our awareness of the process.
This is the map, find the treasure.
“Spilling Open” is a young woman’s adventure to live her life out loud, to belong to herself, to claim her own magic. Her sketches, photos, and paintings created over a period of several years form a beautiful tapestry for her journal entries sprinkled with inspiring quotes from May Sarton, Henry Miller, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Rainer Maria Rilke to name my favorites.
Now that I am holding Sabrina’s book in my hands again after so long, it feels very different to me. I see beyond the visible, the beautiful mix of images and writing on the pages, to the invisible intention at the heart of her book.
Who am I? Am I good enough as is? Can I be okay with the unknown, the unanswered questions, the mystery of Life, and my place in it all?
If before, it was her questions that sparked my own search for answers, now I understand that there are no answers. There is no treasure to be found. Sabrina’s personal quest is not a map, but a window through which we witness her stumbles, losses, insights, and her faith. We move from page to page and witness. We know that on the next page everything will change for her. We see how the suffering leads to love again. Or how feeling inspired will turn to self-doubt again. We have hindsight reading her finished book, something she didn’t have when writing it.
“I want to be more and more myself as ridiculous as that may sound.”
- Henry Miller
We witness Sabrina moving forward in spite of her confusion and unanswered questions, and this is her gift. Her book is a gift of perspective. Not because she had perspective when she wrote those pages, but precisely because she felt lost so many times. Her intention to stay true to herself and stay open to Life was a daily commitment. She dealt with her feelings head-on as they came, reminding us that Life is a moment-to-moment experience. The only thing we can be sure of is that everything will change. The adventure lies in accepting it all, as is, no matter how messy it gets. Our lives are works of art in progress, and Life is in our awareness of the process.
February 12, 2016
I keep coming back to this book. Not necessarily to go through it from cover to cover again, but to look through it & draw from it again. I feel the work still holds up; after all, the questions of self & life that Sabrina Ward Harrison was thinking on when she was younger are still questions people ask themselves today. Questions like, How can you get through pain? Find out who you really are? Be who you really are, do away with your masks, live without being afraid of what's going to happen once people see the real you?
There's also an aesthetic reason. I love looking through people's sketchbooks, especially when they're stuffed full of things, & looking through this book really satisfies that. I envy Ward Harrison's ability to execute her pages. They all feel effortless, yet they aren't haphazard. There is a definite sense of design & composition that underlies the pages; they all make cohesive wholes, which shows the amount of thought & time Ward Harrison put (puts? i'm not sure) into her journals/sketchbooks. There's no sense of simply sticking things wherever & then writing on top of them. The writing is as much a part of the page & the design elements as anything else, it all blends together well.
Even when Ward Harrison is feeling sad, the pages of her book exude a feeling of exuberance for life & all its questions. Even when she feels small, & unpretty, & hurt, & aimless, even when she's full of questions that she doesn't know if she can answer, it always comes back to that. You can feel the life in her pages, through the colors, photographs, words, & ephemera. There is the real sense that Ward Harrison embraces the whole of life, continuing to search for-- & find-- what makes it all worthwhile.
There's also an aesthetic reason. I love looking through people's sketchbooks, especially when they're stuffed full of things, & looking through this book really satisfies that. I envy Ward Harrison's ability to execute her pages. They all feel effortless, yet they aren't haphazard. There is a definite sense of design & composition that underlies the pages; they all make cohesive wholes, which shows the amount of thought & time Ward Harrison put (puts? i'm not sure) into her journals/sketchbooks. There's no sense of simply sticking things wherever & then writing on top of them. The writing is as much a part of the page & the design elements as anything else, it all blends together well.
Even when Ward Harrison is feeling sad, the pages of her book exude a feeling of exuberance for life & all its questions. Even when she feels small, & unpretty, & hurt, & aimless, even when she's full of questions that she doesn't know if she can answer, it always comes back to that. You can feel the life in her pages, through the colors, photographs, words, & ephemera. There is the real sense that Ward Harrison embraces the whole of life, continuing to search for-- & find-- what makes it all worthwhile.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 101 reviews