Friday Finds
Cheles Martinez’s 2014 sketchbook, “Aquí, unos amigos” turns blank sketchbook pages into a place for exploring relationships both oppositional and harmonious. Martinez uses collage to tell stories, not only through the finished image but through a process of collecting found scraps and arranging them. This particular sketchbook is a hybrid of pen illustrations, geometric patchworks of cut-up paper, and Martinez punctuates many of her spreads with thin arrangements of embroidery thread that bring each composition together. Along with color-blocks of paint, the Spanish artist pencils in phrases and sentences collected in the same piecemeal process as collage, producing a sketchbook rich with poetic rhythms. Martinez writes that this sketchbook is “a container of diverse and opposite emotions tied together finally through materials and drawings.” You can see more of Cheles’s artwork on Facebook.
Artist and educator Bruce Dean documents his daily thoughts and adventures through vibrant sketches in his 2011 sketchbook. The Massachusetts-based artist captures slivers of his surroundings, from pasting photographs directly into his book to writings that meditate on the bigger questions of life and art-making. Sketchbooks always act as wonderful catalogs of the artist’s process and this one is no exception. Along with his sketches, Dean includes paintings and snippets of local history, along with clippings of artists and imagery that inspired him. Dean continues to work as a painter and photographer within his community, and you can view more of his work on his website and Princeton Arts Society.
Brittani Faulkes’s “Companion Book” is a delightful look at how the objects we encounter everyday can lead to creative inspiration. Each page features a single found piece (like a maple leaf seed, a worn down metro card, a flake of paint, a bird feather) and reconstructs the item’s color palette through paint swatches. By marking each find with “I am a…” Faulkes demonstrates how these pieces that fascinate her become an extension of the artwork she produces. An added bonus: if you know Morse code, you can take a crack at decoding the little paragraphs Faulkes includes in each spread. You can keep up with Brittani on Instagram and Facebook. You can also see some of her recent works from a group exhibition through the Federation of Canadian Artists and a VR presentation of pieces inspired by a 100-year-old Canadian landscape tradition through The Sweetsorrow Collection.
London-based artist Tamsin Wilson experiments with the gothic horror tradition in her 2011 sketchbook, “Nightmare.” Not for the faint of heart, Wilson filled her sketchbook with illustrations that unsettle you, elements of gore and body horror brought to life through a mix of pen illustration, pencil, and paint. Wilson continues to experiment with abstraction, creating lush portraits and imagery through oil paint on board, canvas and aluminum. On paper, she continues to push the limits of pencil as a medium, warping and manipulating the human form to bring her artistic experiments of creation and destruction to life. You can check out her portfolio on her website and follow her on Instagram.
Wrestling with the theme, “A record year for rainfall,” artist Aimee Rudic presents a sketchbook decorated with the aftermath of a storm. By using ink and paper cut-outs, Rudic plays with botanical and meteorological forms. The kind of ‘rain’ she creates defies reality: sometimes hot to the touch, sometimes full of pollution, neon raindrops in a million different hues. There is a whimsical quality to her work. On one page she playfully points out garments on a clothesline, “intimates for… / all to see… / soaking ruined.” Currently living in New York City, Rudic has taken on a number of creative roles since her 2011 sketchbook, working as surface designer, art director, photo stylist, and graphic designer for a number of luxury and lifestyle brands and publications. You can see more of her textile and surface creations on her Instagram and check out her professional portfolio on her website.