September 2023

The Sketchbook Project

You used to be able to find my sketchbook project (from 2020) contribution here. But as the project has dissolved after a fire took nearly half of the sketchbooks in May 2023 (estimated like 25,000 out of 60,000 were lost to the fire) AND the digital library is now down (which imo is bullshit as many of us paid extra for the digitized option for the sketchbook? I didn’t buy mine, it was a gift from my grandmother and father as a way to ensure my art would shared and that sucks that it is no longer out there) I figured I’d share the few photos I have of my sketchbook.
I’d also like to take a second and say I’m not sure about other artist, but the sketchbook project never reached out to me about the fire, the status of my book, or how to get it back. The dead line to contact them to see if your sketchbook survived and to have it sent back to you was in June and only was announced on their instagram by the looks of it. I’m not sure if my sketchbook will be sent to one of the participating museums or not, but I do hope that the digital library is back up soon, so all of us artists can get copies of our art (that we paid to have, but it’s just my bad for not having already saved the copy, I didn’t think it would randomly be taken down… but that’s what we get for assuming…)

Why protean?

protean- adjective (pro-tee-uhn): 1. of or resembling Proteus (a master of disguise in Greek mythology) in having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms. 2. displaying great diversity or variety. 3. changeable in shape or form.

I’ve always viewed myself as a kind of shapeshifter. Always a hundred hobbies and activities and projects, always a shifting playlist in the background from disco to punk to folk to hyperpop, always several different friend groups involved in different parts of life. I am a multidisciplinary artist that creates mixed media artworks, jewelry, paintings, and sometimes sculptures and various fabric things. My art is distinctly mine, without having a specific quality that I can attribute to being in all of my works- even my signature shifts each time I scribble it out. Of course it’s not just me that feels this way, there’s a whole plethora of us neurodivergent queer artists that have never fully fit in anywhere, yet fit in everywhere.