![]() In 2020, the Brooklyn Art Library officially became a nonprofit. Three years later, he moved to New York and found a rental in Brooklyn to house the permanent sketchbook collection, which now has more than 50,000 sketchbooks from some 130 countries. When founder Steven Peterman started the project in Atlanta in 2006, he wasn’t sure where it would take him. The Brooklyn Art Library, a 2,500-square-foot brick two-story building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is open by appointment only during the Covid-19 pandemic. Occasionally books following those themes are showcased either in the library, at a satellite exhibit, or in the library's bookmobile. Each sketchbook receives a unique seven-digit barcode that allows the team to catalog the book, organizing them by year received and theme (you receive a list of themes to choose from when you order your book). Whenever someone checks out a book digitally, the artist is notified. Those interested in browsing the collection can stop by the Brooklyn Art Library, a 2,500-square-foot brick two-story building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (open by appointment only during the Covid-19 pandemic), or visit the website, search for books by artist or keyword, and peruse a stranger’s artwork. A standard sketchbook costs $30, and one that’s digitized and put online costs $65. But if the library is considering rejecting one, the staff has a conversation with the artist to gain more context around the artwork. Sketchbooks are rarely rejected after they’re submitted-it would have to include something extremely offensive, possibly cause damage to other books in the collection, or contain something unsanitary. Participants have up to eight months to send the completed sketchbook back, at which point it is cataloged and put into the permanent collection. One sketchbook opens into a puzzle another is cut in the shape of a sandwich. Some of the more unique sketchbooks have included embroidered pages and back covers altered to unfold into long maps and drawings. When it arrives, they fill it with art, writing, decoupage, pop-ups, or anything else that fits their chosen style or theme. The Sketchbook Project works like this: people interested in submitting a sketchbook order a blank one from the website. Sketchbook submitted by artist Ky Lawrence When she’s completely filled her book, Cassidy will submit it to the Brooklyn Art Library to be cataloged in the Sketchbook Project, a program that’s celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. ![]() Adorning the pages are important places to her: an apartment in Chicago, a make-believe house, a home in Florence. ![]() Now I’m going to bring it all out into the world to share with others.”įrom front to back, Cassidy's sketchbook is decorated with illustrations of Italian poet Dante Alighieri, Addams Family matriarch Morticia Addams, Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, and little aliens she used to draw as a child. I metaphorically sat with these people in these places for most of 2020, since I literally couldn’t sit anywhere else with anyone else. We also tend to leave pieces of ourselves in places that mean or once meant a lot. “We think about what they would say or do, what wisdom they would have to impart, or how we can be different from them. “We are all influenced every day by the people we take an interest in, good or bad, dead or alive, real or fictional,” she says. Its pages are full of “metaphorical ghosts,” as she puts it, or the people and places that have influenced her life and still stick with her today. Allie Cassidy, a 29-year-old from Illinois, is working on a sketchbook. ![]()
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