Closing out the year with a post about a project I’ve been involved with this year.
Last September an artist in a facebook group I belong to, Deb Jones, also known as “The travelling artist“, launched an idea for the group to create a collaborative sketchbook. An amazing woman, she really took charge, from creating the format we would use, to collecting it all together and getting it hand bound by another artist in the group Jenny Stevenson.
And so “The Golden Thread Sketchbook” was born. The idea was for each artist to create a common thread if you will for all of us as we navigated the 2020 pandemic. To that end as each artist created their individual work dealing in some way with the worldwide lockdowns, we were asked to include a “golden thread” in it, that would physically tie all the work together. Once the works were finished, they were all sent to Deb in the UK and bound together. After going on exhibition, the book is intended to be auctioned with proceeds going to a mental health charity. The amount of work put into this by Deb and the others is truly astonishing. Other artists joined Deb and created the web site and animations (Ozlem Yikici, Charley Hellier, Kelly Herrick , Andrea Grottrick and Michelle Shore).
Altogether 37 artists have taken part. It was a beautiful idea, created from a sense of isolation and the experience has been incredible. Meeting, if only virtually all these people from around the world, has been an amazing and very interesting thing.
My contribution to the book is this drawing called “Building Blocks”, is mixed media, cut paper, ink, pastel gold leaf, pencil and coloured pencil.
Be sure to check out everyone’s work at The Golden Thread Sketchbook
