Yeurgh. Christmas - the black hole of black holes. Between shopping, wrapping, eating, drinking and socialising I didn't get a whole lot of sketching done. In fact, I filled a total of zero pages of my sketchbook during the festive season.
With the combination of the pages I tore out from the middle and the pages I haven't filled up at the end my little sketchbook is quite a bit briefer than it's supposed to be. And now the deadline is upon me. But to tell you the truth, I can't bring myself to feel all that bad about it.
I made 23 sketch/collages in 4 months, which is 23 more than I had done in my life before that. I started a blog (no shit, Sherlock, as my schoolfriend's brother loved to say). I drew a couple of pretty tricky things, ranging from a glue tape to the Guggenheim Museum. I discovered washi tape. Some of my pages turned out pretty darn good if I do say so myself. Some of them also turned out a little bit ugly but it didn't really matter. Because part way through the process I realised that what was happening outside the sketchbook was much more important than what was happening inside the sketchbook.
By taking the time to reflect on and make a record of the things I had forgotten, I was simultaneously engaged in the process of finding ways to remember. I remembered to make mix-tapes for friends. I remembered to write to my nanna. I even remembered to send a birthday card to my dear friend Sally. Mostly I remembered who I was, what I loved. I found the gaps in myself and patched them up.
Pretty soon my sketchbook will be winging its way across to the Arthouse Co-op in Brooklyn, and after that it will be journeying all around the US along with the 30,000 other sketchbooks. So my sketchbook will be gone. But all the things I learnt from it will still be with me.
Thanks so much to my friends, family members, fellow bloggers and complete strangers who have followed my journey of artistic ineptitude. If you enjoyed Text is Art please come and visit my new blog Mailbox of Delight.
