#21 - Participate in the Sketchbook Project each year.

I am just full of artsy projects, aren't I? I can't help myself.

My sketchbook!

Another good friend (Hannah Hinkley) turned me on to this one. An awesome Brooklyn group of artists and art-conscious people called Art House Co-Op puts on The Sketchbook Project, an art collective where you are sent a Moleskine sketchbook with a theme and are asked to send it back in filled with sketches and words and whatever else you can come up with. Then, they take the sketchbooks on tour (like a concert) all over America where people check out your sketchbook and flip through it. The sketchbooks are then kept at the Brooklyn Art Library, where people can check out your sketchbook - it's even got a bar code in it!

I'm obviously a big fan of this. Why? Because being able to flip through someone's sketchbook, for many people, is like reading their journal - much closer even than a painting in a gallery or a book or something like that. And, at any rate, it's so dang interesting to me to see how creative people can get when given the chance. And it combines two of my favorite things - art and libraries.

It was a $25 fee to sign up for the sketchbook and the project, and another optional $20 to have each page digitally scanned and able to be viewed/checked out online. (I contemplated an extra $20 for a t-shirt....but decided to pass.) $45 is about the price that many pay for a submission fee to a juried art show, anyways - and I couldn't pass it up.

At any rate, it's a really neat project and I have until January 15th to complete and send in my sketchbook. My theme is "...you'd be home by now", and I decided to devote my sketchbook to telling the story of "the lone wolf" (we all know one), and that wolfy part of all of us.

I'll post pics regularly. And, if you're interested, here is my Art House Co-Op profile. Cheers!