One of my favourite new discoveries—The Sketchbook Project.

Such a clever idea by the people at the Art House to share and promote various forms of art—and have fun doing it. Imagine.

Anyone can join for the price of a blank book, which is then ‘arted up’, sent to New York, digitalized, and then sent on a tour across North America with some very nice stops in the process, including both the MOCA and the LACMA in Los Angeles, Toronto’s Distillery District, Vancouver, Portland, Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Santa Fe, and others, before returning to its permanent home on the shelves of the Brooklyn Art Library, where anyone can visit at any time.

Here’s a great little write up by Ashville BookWorks, in North Carolina, where the exhibit rolled through (in a custom built bookmobile) in March.

My contribution — I am Somewhere  — a collection of dreams (yes, mine) with illustrations in collage. (What else does one do with dreams?? And am I the only one who, when explaining a dream to a friend, begins with that vague sense of being “somewhere…” and if I am [the only such one], what do other people begin their dream-telling with? And if you don’t tell dreams, why not? And if you don’t dream… um, Freud has something to say about that; can’t remember what.)

Anyway, it was a great lark and I thoroughly enjoyed the two winter afternoons devoted to it. Nice to exercise a different muscle. And thank you, dear local library for your abundance of cast off magazines.

Here’s a sample of the madness:

**
I’m somewhere,
reading about owls
and how their wings
make no sound
(there is down involved in this magic)
and then I fall asleep and in my dream I dream about
owls flying in a line across
the sky… but my double dream state
doesn’t believe that they are really owls
even though their chubby cigar shape
is unmistakable.
They fly to the west (my left)
and then disappear bit by bit
in puffs of smoke
or clouds
or swirled air.

More somewheres here.