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Contribute to the Bracebridge Library’s Sketchbook Collection
The collection is inspired by the Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project. It was a collective art project that ran from 2009 until 2023, housing 50,000 sketchbooks by creators from around the globe.
If you have a connection to Muskoka, we want to share your perspective with the Bracebridge Library’s new Sketchbook Collection.
The sketchbooks can be purchased for $5 at the Bracebridge Library. After buying one, it is up to you what it is filled up with! You could spend your drawing what you see, or you could let your imagination run wild and sketch whatever comes to your mind.
You can return the sketchbooks at any time. Once you bring them back, they will be prominently displayed so the community can see your perspective of Cottage Country! It will be up to you if the sketchbooks can be displayed for a short period or permanently.
Our goal with this collection is to inspire our community by boosting local voices, stories and perspectives.
Sketchbooks are at the core of my creative practice, and I am just a tiny drop in a sea of artists who would say the same. Sketchbooks functionally serve as a safe place to learn your craft and grow skills while taking in the world around you. They are a place for curiosity, growth, ideating and storytelling.
The best part about sketchbooks is that there is no right or wrong way to use them.
Its scope can be as tight or as broad as we choose it to be. They can act as a journal, record our travels, and capture loose ideas in scribbles on one page or a masterpiece on the next. They are an unvarnished and intuitive way of showing: this is what I saw, and this is what I like. They are a record of where we started, and how we arrived.
Although a sketchbook can be a vulnerable place, I think there is something inherently valuable in sharing it with others.
We are constantly surrounded by art and sometimes don’t even realize it from logos to book covers. So often we only see highly polished, highly rendered art, that we quickly walk or scroll passed to the next thing that is screaming for our attention. This starves us of the process of making art, when so much of the process is planning, experimenting, discarding, and starting over, and we miss the chance to digest the art we are seeing.
The sketchbooks can be purchased at the Coulson Family Bracebridge Library at 34 Salmon Avenue. And if you need inspiration, we will post themes on our social media accounts every so often.
Natasha Banks is a Library Assistant and leads many of the art programs offered at the Bracebridge Library.