The Sketchbook Project is a world wide way for anyone to display their artistic and creative ideas. A video on the site shows images of hundreds of sketchbooks filled with unique, personal art.
The project has simple rules; when closed, the sketchbook must remain in the original dimensions it came in and the artist must stick to the themes created. This year the themes included “Adhere to Me”, “Coffee and Cigarettes” and “Revenge”.
“People seem to really respond to the cataloging system, which allows readers to peruse the collection by theme, and explore the wildly disparate ways in which different artists interpret the same points of departure.” said Project Manager, Eli Dvorkin.
After one has finished a sketchbook, they send it back to The Brooklyn Art Library, where thousands are already ready for the tour. The sketchbooks will travel to a number of cities, including, San Francisco, Calif., Seattle, Wash., Austin, Texas, Chicago, Ill., Atlanta, Ga., Winter Park, Fla., Washington DC, Brooklyn, N.Y. and Portland, Maine.
“This year’s project is by far the largest and most exciting in Art House history,” said Dvorkin.
According to Dvorkin, it was Art House co-founder, Shane Zucker’s father who came up with the idea.
“His dad would come up with ‘all kinds of outrageous ideas’—but that one stuck!” exclaimed Dvorkin.
Foothill’s art program hopes to become a major part of the project as well.
“There’s a hundred and twenty-five art students participating,” said Justin Frazier, one of the art teachers at Foothill, “I had no clue people would find it interesting.”
Frazier himself heard about the project when his wife participated in a different project from Art House last year. He checked his Facebook page and saw that his friends from college were participating in it too. After chatting for awhile with his friends, he realized that this was something that student artists at Foothill could do.
“I like the exposure; that it’s really open so it allows students to be creative,” said Frazier.
And looking at the whiteboard filled with names of students who are participating and the stacks of boxes filled with moleskin sketchbooks, it’s obvious that Art House has reached students from across the country with their unifying art project.
“The end result is totally different,” Frazier said, “It gives students a lot of opportunities to push themselves in new directions.”
