Expressing what is important to you using more than just words and sharing it with the world is what the Radical Sketchbook Project is about. Carla Wilson, assistant teaching professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Northern Arizona University, started this last spring to show her students how to think creatively about what they learn in class and illustrate their knowledge, thoughts and feelings. She based it on a project founded 20 years ago in New York City.
The creators sent participants a blank sketchbook, and each artist would create within its pages and send it back. The initiative turned into a collection at the Brooklyn Art Library of more than 50,000 works by more than 30,000 artists. The creators also had a bookmobile that would take these sketchbooks on the road and to visit different coffee shops throughout the United States.
“It felt like community to me beyond where I was; it was global and creative,” Wilson said. “It had a lot of meaning to me.”
With this experience in mind, Wilson worked with her mother, who lives in Texas, to create blank sketchbooks for each of her students. The goal of this project is to show students how to take what they are learning, feeling, thinking and experiencing, and share it in a way everyone can understand.
Annaliese Martin took the class last spring and said that the assignment allowed her creative freedom to express her thoughts and feelings.
“Dr. Wilson encourages us to engage with material in ways that involve not only our minds but also our bodies and hearts,” Martin said. “We were allowed to select a topic related to the semester’s key themes and creatively express themselves with a handmade sketchbook. Students were free from the constraints of traditional papers or presentation, leading to truly unique and thoughtful work.”
This kind of creativity allows students to express themselves freely when what they are thinking or feeling might be hard to put into words.
“Students are coming into their own identities and questioning where they fit in and where they don’t, and they are writing about topics that are important to them,” Wilson said. “I tell students it is important to take what we learn in our classroom and make it accessible through art, through quotes, through just a different language than academia, which is not accessible for everyone.”
She believes these sketchbooks are a way to bring issues that are important to students out to the community where they will be heard.
“A lot of my students don’t feel comfortable talking about these topics at home with their families because they might have different political beliefs or values,” Wilson said. “However, I think if they can learn how to make the language more accessible, they may be able to have good conversations. Just opening the door to listen to people and sharing what you think but not trying to convince people to change. Also knowing that you can listen to people that you don’t agree with and maintain your values and your belief system. It does not hurt to listen. I think these sketchbooks are kind of a window to invite people to conversation.”
Since this project began, students have exhibited their sketchbooks at Cline Library at the end of each semester. The exhibition for this semester is scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Thursday, April 24 inside Learning Room 249. Wilson hopes that soon the project will expand its exhibit to the Coconino Center for the Arts, making it more accessible to the community at large.
“My long-term goal is to continue to build the public aspect, maybe inviting 10 to 20 people in the community to create a sketchbook, and maybe at the exhibit we have a table that says, ‘community table’ so anyone can do a sketchbook,” Wilson said.
To see the Instagram account of The Radical Sketchbook project, visit https://www.instagram.com/ws.rsbp?igsh=eng0ZHRxNmdiZXVi&utm_source=qr
Mariana Laas | NAU Communications
(928) 523-5050 | mariana.laas@nau.edu