A happy surprise fell into my mailbox…an envelope with the fire-damaged sketchbook ‘thinking of you’. The story:
In 2006 two art students in the USA began the ‘Sketchbook Project’ (https://hyperallergic.com/806540/the-ineffable-charm-of-an-artists-sketchbook-brooklyn-art-library/). Every other month or so you could buy a five-by-seven-inch, paper-bound sketchbook and fill it according to that month’s theme. Over the next 17 years, the initiative turned into a collection of over 50,000 works by more than 30,000 artists ranging from love letters and diary entries to graphic novels and intricately-detailed masterpieces.
Early 2023 the Sketchbook Project shut down because of a catastrophic fire that destroyed almost half of the sketchbooks. The remaining 35,000 are placed in four small institutions in the United States and Canada.
If your book was salvaged you could get it back, which I decided to do. When I learned about the project my mother had recently passed away, so the theme ‘thinking of you’ fit perfectly. I made it into a journal of memories that typified her for me. It is wonderful to have the book back.