Greg Stanforth delivering "Creating a Culture of Sketchbooks"

I just returned from New York City where my former high school art teacher Greg Stanforth and I presented at the National Art Education Association (NAEA) conference. Our presentation, which was titled “Creating a Culture of Sketchbooks in a High School Art Program,” outlined a three-step curriculum that art teachers can use to successfully integrate sketchbooks into their studio courses.

Greg, who chairs the art department at my alma mater—Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati—spent 30 years in the classroom experimenting with different ways to engage students in daily sketchbook work. After years of uneven results, he found his way to the method he now uses. Today, it is common for his students to fill several books a year and begin their assignments with a sketchbook-based set of exploratory drawings.

A unique aspects of Greg’s program is the openness with which his students express themselves and their willingness to share their sketchbooks with their teachers and one another.

Greg’s students benefit more than just artistically and personally from his teaching; most years, his students collectively receive more than $1 million dollars in art scholarship offers.

The three steps in Greg’s method are require, share, and inspire.

Step 1: Require
Greg requires his students to keep sketchbooks beginning in their first art class, which provides them with structure and incentives. They are expected to begin every assignment by using their sketchbooks to explore ideas and experiment with techniques and media. Students are also expected to fill a minimum of one page per day, seven days a week, and their sketchbook assignments are graded like any other in his classes.

Step 2: Share
Greg believes strongly that students must be encouraged to believe in their own ideas. He works hard to create an environment in which students feel safe to share their work, regardless of whether or not the subject matter is personal.

Step 3: Inspire
Despite good intentions, the art teacher alone cannot inspire his or her students. Greg brings in outside experts such as local artists and designers, alumni, and college admissions reps to speak with his classes. In many cases, these experts echo what he tells his students, validating the lessons he tries to impart.

Visitors to the classroom are only one source of inspiration: Greg also uses a wide variety of books, websites, DVDs, and other resources. But most importantly, he insists, the students should be encouraged to find inspiration in one another and their own experiences.

Taken together, these three steps create a “culture of sketchbooks” in which students integrate these books into their creative work and daily lives.

The question and answer session was lively and went well past our allotted time. We were inspired to be with so many enthusiastic teachers, and we hope that we gave them something useful to take back to their classrooms.

Danny Gregory and Bob after the NAEA presentation

A Visit from Danny Gregory
We were also deeply gratified to have special guest Danny Gregory, author of books such as Everyday Matters, The Creative License, and An Illustrated Life (which I always recommend when I speak to groups or hold workshops). Greg and I had a chance to chat with Danny both before and after the presentation, and he was kind enough to offer some encouragement and good advice.

We were even more flattered when Danny posted this very gracious recap of the event on his blog.

I’ll write more about the conference in the next few days. In the meantime, if anyone from the conference has any questions, please contact me through the site.

Official show poster for "Portmanteau"

I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity for a solo exhibition at the Kent State University’s Trumbull campus. While I will be showing some original work, I want to offer something more participatory for those who attend the show. Consequently, much of the gallery will be dedicated to space for show attendees to create their own sketchbook artwork. Below is an artist’s statement which sums up the driving idea.

Many thanks to Professor Phillip Buntin of Kent State for inviting me to show in their gallery.

Artist’s Statement :: Portmanteau

“Portmanteau” has an interesting double meaning: in the original French a double-sided suitcase, later co-opted by Lewis Carroll to mean a word created by a blend of two morphemes. “Brunch” and “spork” are two favorite examples.

The inspiration for the show theme came from an interview I heard with Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In the interview, Foer spoke about Vonnegut’s assertion that the reader performs the ultimate creative act in any work of fiction: no story is complete until it is read and imagined by a reader. I was struck by the fundamental truth of this idea and intrigued by how it might be applied in visual art.

That train of thought led me to the realization that most art exhibitions are largely one-way affairs. The artist shows and the viewers look. Granted, viewers bring their own interpretations to the experience, but the traditional show model wasn’t participatory enough. I hope instead to provide an active experience for those who come to Portmanteau, which in many senses will be co-created with them.

There are many levels on which the show is a mélange, and a portmanteau—whether a suitcase or a blended word—is a perfect metaphor. I see this show as a way to explore the relative roles of exhibitor and viewer, blurring the traditional lines of distinction between them.

Books about art journals and sketchbooks generally come in two types: how books and what books. How books, which cater to new and aspiring journal keepers, focus on technical demonstrations and creative prompts—exercises that are meant to inspire readers to greater feats of creativity. What books are all about pretty work, serving up excerpts from the sketchbooks of fine artists, designers, and people who work in other visual fields.

What is missing are the why books: those that explore the motivations artists have for creating sketchbooks in the first place, and the reasons why art journals are as valid an expressive medium as any shown in a gallery.

Jennifer New’s Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art comes closer to filling that need than any book I’ve found. In addition to delightful visuals, it offers a framework for understanding journal keeping as a conceptual and physical art form.

At first glance, Drawing from Life appears to be just another what book, albeit a nicely executed one. It includes a thoughtful preface and introductory essay as well as color reproductions of the work of 31 journal keepers. Each creator’s work is accompanied by a page-long introduction that gives background and context to the images that follow.

Some whose work appears in the book are well known in the art, design, and creative professions: illustrators Maira Kalman and Linda Barry, 1,000 Journals Project founder Brian Singer, and former Harvard art professor Idelle Weber all contributed work. David Byrne, best known as the lead singer of the Talking Heads but who also studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Maryland Institute College of Art, is also featured.

Like any good what book, Drawing from Life could be enjoyed on a purely visual level. On that level alone would be one of the better examples available. But New offers more: a different way for us to look at sketchbooks and artists journals.

In her introduction, New’s definition of journals focuses more on the activity than the end result; they are for her any place “we record personal reflections, observations of our world, playful meanderings, and plans.” Consequently, she includes not only the expected visual artists, illustrators, and designers, but also filmmakers, architects, songwriters, scientists—even an engineer and a psychiatrist. The result is an intriguing mix of well-executed traditional sketchbooks and more conceptual work that challenges our preconceptions about what is or is not an art journal.

Many of the alternative journals were created by non-artists. Masayoshi Nakano, who chronicled daily walks with photographs and intricate maps in meticulously crafted journals, is a retired engineer. Renato Umal, who each day pairs a photo of himself with a simple statement about something he learned, is a musician. And Tucker Shaw, who photographs everything he eats and includes them in his journals, works as a writer in New York City.

These chronology based projects, whose power depends on the viewer experiencing the whole body of work, are ideally suited for the journal format.

In addition to an expanded definition of what comprises a sketchbook or journal, New also provides us a four part framework in which to view them. This framework, which she calls a “hierarchy of reasons” for keeping a journal, highlights common threads she has seen in the thousands of sketchbook pages she reviewed for this book. New assigns the sketchbooks she presents into one of the following four categories: observation, reflection, exploration, or creation.

Dividing the books into these four categories provides New the opportunity to offer insight into the underlying reasons people keep sketchbooks. These insights provide a context that enriches not only the work in this book, but all sketchbooks and art journals.

Throughout the book, New successfully straddles the divide between substance and pretense, offering readers a view of sketchbooks that is thoughtful and sophisticated without being overly cerebral. She treats her subject seriously without sacrificing the intimacy inherent  in the medium, and the warmth of her affection for journals of all types permeates her writing.

You won’t learn many techniques from Drawing from Life, but the market is rife with other how-to guides. New offers readers something truly original instead: an insightful, intelligent context in which to consider the medium of sketchbooks.

Amazon link here.

Michigan-based sculptor and impresario of all things creative John T. Unger is back on the air with a new episode in one of my favorite podcasts, Art Heroes Radio. Unger’s podcast features interviews that cover a wide variety of topics related to creativity, art, and the business of making a living doing what you love.

His latest installment is a discussion with writer and cartoonist Austin Kleon. Best known for his newspaper blackout poems, Kleon is a writer and cartoonist whose work freely crosses the traditional boundaries between words and visual art.

The interview centers around a recent blog post of Kleon’s that has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors: How to Steal Like an Artist and 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me. Though some of the things, like “write the book you want to read,” sound like truisms, there is inspiring and useful wisdom in his advice.

There’s a new book in the gallery. I’ve posted the first few spreads of Book Eleven, which is currently in progress.

I’ve switched to the Moleskine watercolor notebook from my old standby, the Moleskine large sketchbook. The format of the watercolor notebook is radically different: each spread measures 5 inches high by 16 inches wide. The paper quality is much higher, especially in accepting wet media, influencing the images I develop.

After nearly 10 years, I had gotten a bit comfortable with the old books and am enjoying the edgy feeling of trying something new.

I’ll keep posting images as I finish them.

Photo: Andrea Scher

I just heard via his blog that New York-based artist and writer Danny Gregory is planning a new book. It will be a sketchbook memoir about the loss of his wife, who was killed in an accident just over a year ago.

Chronicle Books in San Francisco plans to publish the book in Fall/Winter of 2012.

Danny has a much more directly confessional style than I do, but I’m a big fan of both his art and his writing. I always appreciate his observations about drawing and life, and have included several of his books in the resources section of this site.

Creativity Coach Mark McGuinness, who writes for The Behance Network’s 99%, has written an interesting post on why creative people benefit from eccentric work habits. McGuinness is also a licensed therapist in the U.K. and has some intriguing insights into the psychology behind the strange rituals we all develop to produce our best creative work.

You can find more of McGuinness’ writing on creativity on his blog Lateral Action.