A sketchbook, like a diary, is personal. It is usually not planned for public consumption. It's where the maker first brings to light ideas that come from deep inside. The self-edit function, the perfectionist, is turned off.
Like a thumbprint, every artist’s sketchbook is unique.
Viewing the sketchbooks in Unfinished Verses, on view at ArtYard in Frenchtown through February 9, is a chance to indulge our voyeuristic tendencies. We are literally peeping through peepholes in the specially constructed ceiling-mounted-looking devices created for this exhibition. Each includes two openings so that viewers can look from different heights, accommodating those of varying stature or who use wheelchairs.
While the enclosures keep us from touching the works on paper, museum personnel turn the leaves once each day to reveal new pages. This means that each time you visit, you will see something new.
“A sketchbook is more than just a collection of pages for an artist,” writes curator Alexandre Arrechea, “it’s a gateway to their creative universe, bridging the tangible world with the realm of ideas. Unbound by linear constraints, sketchbooks serve as a dynamic canvas where drawings, collages, and artistic exploration overlap and interact... Thus a sketchbook becomes a living document of artistic evolution – a personal journal that captures the essence of an artist’s journey through every line and stroke, all within a compact space.”
Arrechea is no stranger to ArtYard – his 2022 exhibition, Landscape and Hierarchies, included a monumental watercolor drawing created with water from the nearby Delaware River.
Landscapes and Hierarchies, curated by Elsa Mora during Arrechea’s ArtYard residency, occupied the entire exhibition space. “That experience was pivotal in shaping the idea of curating a project — something I had never done before,” he says from Madrid, where he is present. “Through inspiring conversations with (ArtYard Founder and Executive Director) Jill Kearney and Elsa, who encouraged me to take on this challenge, the concept began to take shape.”
His 2022 sketches, on ruled notebook paper, of Frenchtown’s historic architecture also make him the ideal person to curate Unfinished Verses.
“This exhibition represents a new role for me as a curator, allowing me to step into a different creative and collaborative process.”
Arrechea sought to explore the role sketchbooks play in an artist's practice, as “gateways to the artist's creative universe.”
By focusing on sketchbooks, he wanted to highlight the “overlooked beauty of artistic experimentation — the layers, revisions, and moments of discovery that precede the final work.”
He also sought to challenge “the fast-paced, oversaturated consumption of art typical of social media. Unfinished Verses invites viewers to slow down, engage thoughtfully, and immerse themselves in the intricacies of the creative process.”
The 10 artists were selected through Arrechea’s personal connections and those he admired. For example, he and Fernando Rodriguez Falcon went to school together in Cuba.
Bhakti Baxter, El Celso, Rakeem Cunningham, Rafael Domenech, Fernando Rodriguez Falcon, Nereida García Ferraz, Shizu Saldamando, Paula de Solminihac, Paola Vega, and Tomas Vu “were chosen because their work embodies the intricacies and ongoing nature of the creative process.”
The artists were given blank sketchbooks approximately eight months before the exhibition, allowing them to make the sketchbooks their own. They were encouraged to integrate them into their daily lives — to carry them around and use them as spaces for spontaneous ideas and explorations. Each artist was free to determine their own language and approach, with no predefined plan, allowing their sketchbooks to evolve organically.
“The sketchbook captures the DNA of how ideas grow and transform over time,” says Arrechea. “Even a stain or an incomplete mark on a page can hold meaningful insights, revealing the intimate and raw aspects of creativity. Each page becomes a tangible record of growth and discovery.”
As a visitor approaches the viewing boxes, lights illuminate the interiors. Saigon-born Tomas Vu has created a mixed-media vignette that shows a small male figure amid corrugated stacks. A blue circle and a gold dot underscores how small this figure is, possibly someone from the past who is now a distant memory.
Nearby, in Paula De Solminihac’s work, we see a Samuel Johnson quote penciled in at the top of the page: “There is nothing, sir, to (sic) little for so little creature as man.” Although any connective theme might be random, given the nature of the project, on the day I visited the feeling of smallness dominated.
Speaking of small, in ArtYard’s VSG (Very Small Gallery) – niches behind the wall that can be viewed through lenses such as a vintage brass mailbox slot – miniature artist Drew Leshko has created three little worlds from carved wood and cut paper, based on the architecture of his Philadelphia neighborhood, including the Khyber Pass Pub. These complement the peering into another world established in Unfinished Verses.
Leshko recreates minute details from his neighborhood, such as Dumpsters and pallets, at a 1:12 scale. Accumulations of, for example, acid rain deposits and rust become adornments.
ArtYard’s continuing series of exhibitions curated by Studio Route 29, a program that champions those with intellectual and developmental disabilities to play and create, features the artwork of Nicole Storm in Artist Woman. Found and folded paper are consumed with Storm’s mark making, like asemic writing or sgraffito. Bright reds and blues are obsessively scrawled with contrasting line, often white, using acrylic, watercolor, ink, markers and pens.
Storm, who has Down syndrome, doesn’t sit or stand while working; rather, she walks around the site, hides in corners, carrying her work with her as she adds to her drawings and paintings. This ambulatory process is how she gathers and harvests visual information, according to the Oakland, California-based Creative Growth, a non-profit that advances the inclusion of artists with developmental disabilities by providing a supportive studio environment and gallery representation. Roberta Smith in the New York Times named Storm’s 2021 exhibition at White Columns in New York one of the best gallery shows of that year.
If all of this makes you feel a hankering to draw, proceed to the popup exhibition Red Pencils. Seen from a distance, the space looks like its been wallpapered in red toile, but on closer inspection, these are not 18th-century European pastoral scenes, but visitor-contributed drawings – using supplied red pencils – inspired by natural artifacts on display: a taxidermized warthog, a lobster shell, a giraffe skull, a wasp nest, a dried mushroom. Visitors are invited to pick up an easel, paper, and red colored pencil and draw with fearless abandon. The red pencils provided “are not the red pencils of your third-grade English teacher — these have been specially treated to excise your inner critic,” says the sign. “Studies show that engaging in creative tasks in the community while holding a red pencil increases emotional intelligence and joie de vivre. Studies further demonstrate that drawings made by participants of vastly different experiences and abilities look wonderful together when all drawn with a red pencil.”
