Tag: Visual Art

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Brooklyn Art Library: The Sketchbook Project. Challenge Accepted!

I had never heard of the Brooklyn Art Library before they showed up on my timeline on Facebook. But the ad that appeared piqued my curiosity because it was for The Sketchbook Project. Essentially, you purchase their standard sketch book and fill it up within their timeline. Once you have completed it, you return it and it joins their physical library and can be scanned into their digital library as well.

So the initial sketch book is $30. It is 16 white leaves (32 usable pages) in a 5×7 sketchbook stapled at the spine with soft cardboard covers. So there is plenty of room to develop ideas or sketches or illustrations or random thoughts/ideas. If you visit the library you will find that most entries defy what most of us consider a sketchbook…just something that we as an artist carries to preserve ideas and sketch out our experiences. Instead most of the sketchbooks in the library lean more toward complete and coherent works of art. The possibilities of course are endless.

The instructions that come with the book suggest themes for the current year but those are more suggestions that requirements…artists are free to be…artists!

There are some limitations on size…essentially you need to stay within the size supplied and anything that can come loose or become damaged or may be a danger to others is prohibited…but I can’t see that as being much of a restriction.

Having your sketchbook digitized is an additional $35, but that gives it a chance to be seen by the big world out there.

Challenge Accepted!

So what does this have to do with me and why am I writing about this? Well as I have stated elsewhere, I am a professional grade procrastinator and am slowly putting the finishing touches on my combined art/music studio (aka as the spare bedroom). So having a project with a hard timeline sounded just like the perfect place to inspire a restart in my active art making. So I ordered my BAL Sketchbook and it arrived in January (it is pictured here) and have started planning what art and art activities I need to perform to get to a completed sketchbook! I am not sure what I am going to call my project…something like reset/restart or something. And now that I am going public, I have an added incentive to pursue the project within the official time frame!

IMPORTANT VOL. 18 DEADLINES:

Order your sketchbook by: June 14, 2021

Return your sketchbook by: August 31, 2021

Book enters library by: November 1, 2021

**Yes, you can submit a book after the deadline. It will just miss the traveling part.

And I intend to document my progress here as we go along; just to keep pushing myself and treat my blog posts as something of a diary of progress. Not sure how I will tag them yet but probably with whatever title I decide to assign to the sketchbook…but probably with reset included somewhere/somehow.

In the meantime, if I’ve peeked your interest, here are some links to check out:

How to participate!

A few tidbits about the BAL Sketchbook project.

AND the most important item of all…the FAQs!

I don’t know how often I write an update…depends on my time and more importantly my progress…but I will include my thought process and reasoning as well. Some extracts from this diary will probably populate an artist’s statement to include in the sketchbook.

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Mario Moore: A Fellow At Work: Focusing On Black Workers At Princeton University.

There is nothing in the post that is original to me. But I have been spending part of my pandemic quarantine time these past few months attending Zoom lectures from the Princeton Art Museum. In their December email newsletter was a link to this presentation by Mario Moore about his show at Princeton while he was the 2018 – 2019 Hodder Fellow there. It is a year old but still relevant in 2020 and maybe even more so. I found it very intriguing and very rewarding. Here is the video included in the article and I would recommend that you click this link and read the entire story!

“The Work of Several Lifetimes,” an exhibition of new work created over the past year by Moore, presents etchings, drawings and large-scale paintings of black men and women who work at or around campus. Moore was a 2018-19 Hodder Fellow in the Lewis Center for the Arts; the fellowship is given to artists and writers of exceptional promise to pursue independent projects at the University during the academic year.

Moore was one of five Hodder Fellows for the 2018-19 academic year. Moore received a BFA in illustration from the College for Creative Studies (2009) and an MFA in painting from the Yale School of Art (2013). He has participated as an artist-in-residence at Knox College, The Fountainhead and the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. His work has been exhibited at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, and Detroit Institute of Arts, and with the Smithsonian Institution. Moore’s solo exhibitions include Winston-Salem State University’s Diggs Gallery and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts. His work is included in the “Studio Visit Volume 31” (2015) and the Studio Museum in Harlem’s catalog, “Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet and Contemporary Art” (2014).

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Museums Close As Pandemic Spreads: Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum

First, from an email that I received on Tuesday November 17th from the Art Institute of Chicago:

Since reopening in late July, the Art Institute has warmly—and safely—welcomed visitors back to the galleries to experience firsthand the transformative power of art.

However, due to the governor’s new directives for the state of Illinois, the museum will immediately be closed to visitors.

We will continue to work with local and state public health departments and will keep you updated on any new developments, including information about reopening.

In the meantime, please stay in touch through our website and social media channels. We’ll continue to develop content that fulfills our mission to foster the exchange of ideas and inspire an expansive, inclusive understanding of human creativity.

In the meantime take advantage of their online features and information. Their website is: https://www.artic.edu/

And this morning, the Milwaukee Business Journal published an article that the Milwaukee Art Museum would close until January 2, 2021 due to concerns from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Milwaukee Art Museum announced it will close to the public beginning Thursday through at least Jan. 2, 2021, as a result of rising Covid-19 cases in the city of Milwaukee.

While the facility is closed to the public, art museum staff will work from home to continue virtual art museum engagements. The museum is encouraging visitors to view its content online with virtual tours of gallery spaces, interviews with artists and art projects for families.

And so you can keep tabs and utilize their online features, the MAM website is: http://mam.org/

Editor’s Note: this afternoon I also received notification that the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Cleveland Museum Of Art are closing for a period of time due to the pandemic. MPM didn’t provide an anticipated opening date, while CMA hopes to reopen on December 17th, 2020.