Halifax is new home to sketchbook library

Glynis Humphrey sorts through a stack of brown moleskin-like notebooks, taking her time to examine each one.

Every sketchbook brings to life its own unique character. One looks very simple with a drawing of a heart and the words “how to love” on the cover. Another has textured fabrics framing the cover, re-bound with string and lace peering out from between the pages.  

Awestruck, Humphrey handles each book with care. 

“They are just marvelous. Such incredible inspiration from artists all over,” said Humphrey.   

The 22,000 sketchbooks were part of a collection of over 60,000 from the Brooklyn Art Library in Brooklyn, N.Y., called The Sketchbook Project.  

The Sketchbook Project was founded 18 years ago by Steven Peterman, a 20-year-old art student at the time.

The purpose of the project was to create an archive of sketchbooks, journals and diaries that document the daily lives of people from all over the world.

Some people were careful and intimate with their art, while others used the pages on a whim. No matter how they were used, each sketchbook was filled for the purpose of contributing to a larger artistic project.  

Anyone around the world could use the Sketchbook Project website to choose a theme and order an empty sketchbook, which was five by seven inches with a brown cover. Users would borrow the sketchbook and return it full of their own words and art to the Brooklyn Art Library. 

During COVID, Peterman and his team in Brooklyn were relocating the project to Florida when the truck carrying all the sketchbooks was in an accident, destroying or damaging an estimated 15,000 books.  

The art library then divided the remaining collection across the U.S. and Canada. Wonder’neath Art Society in Halifax is now home to the sketchbooks sent from Canadian artists around the country.

The remaining sketchbooks submitted by adults were distributed to North Dakota, Arizona and Tennessee. The sketchbooks done by children are in New York City in a children’s museum. 

Humphrey is a volunteer at the Wonder’neath Art Society in Halifax, which now has the entire collection of Canadian submissions to The Sketchbook Project.

The goal of an event held on Wednesday was to introduce the community to the continuation of the project and invite folks into the arts space where they have the opportunity to be a part of cataloging the 22,000 sketchbooks that now live at Wonder’neath, which is on Maynard in north-end Halifax.  

Heather Wilkinson, co-founder of Wonder’neath, is proud to be continuing the work that Peterman started in 2006.  

She said, “We want to celebrate the act of making a sketchbook, or journaling, and just all the different ways of working that are meditative and thoughtful ways of processing things through art making.” 

“I knew the project as an artist first,” said Wilkinson.  

She and her studio partner, Melissa Marr, would usually fill the notebook in a rush the day before it was due. 

“We would go to the studio, tell our families ‘We are gone for 24 hours!’ and take the book apart, draw in all the pages, put the book back together and send it off. It was just a really great prompt and a way to be part of a larger participatory project.”