From The Creators Project: "In the late 19th century, Southern California attracted misfits, idealists, and entrepreneurs with few ties to anyone or anything. Swamis, spiritualists, and other self-proclaimed religious authorities quickly made their way out West to forge new faiths. Independent book publishers, motivational speakers, and metaphysical-minded artists and writers then became part of the Los Angeles landscape. City of the Seekers examines how the legacy of this spiritual freedom enables artists to make creative work as part of their practices.

Informal personality quizzes are nothing new. Long before the proliferation of clickable multiple-choice tests from sketchy sites online, print magazines published all kinds of ersatz exams about everything from makeup to sex, and probably even makeup sex. (Vanity Fair still does, albeit more tastefully.) The truth is that the tradition of supplying intimate answers to bold questions originated as a Victorian parlor game, and in 1890, a teenage Marcel Proust (1871-1922) indulged in the fad. It's his handwritten manuscript, An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc., that inspired artist Joanna Neborsky to try to bring back the erstwhile tradition of providing longhand answers to life's profound questions.

There really isn't a term to describe Joanna Neborsky's artistic style, which is a blend of antique spot illustrations, original drawings, and other collages reassembled into colorful yet mind-boggling pieces of meta clip-art. Maybe that's why she's the ideal artist to illustrate A Proust Questionnaire, a book of questions based on Marcel Proust's own answers in his confession album, as there's also not really a word to describe Proust's own writing except 'Proustian.'..." (For the full story and more images, click here)

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