Sketchbooks and DREAM DRAWINGS

I have a practice of writing down dreams and drawing from dreams. This is a selection of pastels and collages and also charcoal drawings on gesso painted paper. I have kept sketchbooks from the time I was a teenager.

Recently, as I have been mulling over what it is to keep a sketchbook, I came upon a quote that resonated.

“I have spent my life making ritual objects for a tribe that doesn’t exist” Steve Dilworth

When I was very young, I felt set apart, that I did not quite belong, and I yearned for belonging. I felt the need to create my own path, find my tribe, and this seemed to happen through the channel of textiles. This path became my way into understanding the fabric of human nature, of people everywhere creating cloth, embellishment, everyday rituals, identity through garments.  Before the time of the internet, I sought out books and people to help find signposts along that path. Keeping a sketchbook felt like I could grasp some of it.

I gathered snippets of a world I was looking for. The sketchbooks became repositories of poems and quotes, dreams and dream images, gardening tips and recipes, technical information and ideas I wanted to remember. In looking back on the earliest sketchbooks I see a circularity, glimmers of things that still interest me today. Always the use of the worn and castoff materials, repurposed and reimagined. The need to find wholeness and purpose in life and work.

The sketchbooks were my entrance to art school. I brought my sketchbooks in a basket for my interview at West Surrey College of Art and Design, and was told I had done the foundation year and was admitted on the spot. In that moment I realized I was doing something that was valued. I feel honored to be included in this tribe of sketchbook keepers.