The DART Summer Invitational, Pimp Your Sketchbook, continues with West Coast artist Malado Baldwin’s epic sketchbook projects.

Grenoble self-portrait with African masks, Modigliani, 1995 / 2015. On view at Hackett Mill Gallery, San Francisco: August 23^rd- October 19^th 2018.

Looking back, I’ve been working with the sketchbook format for more than twenty-five years.  As a teenager, sketchbooks were a sacred, private place to reflect on life. As an adult, they became more than a place for personal revelations, but also idea-generators and a way to work towards larger projects. Over the years, the cumulative nature of continuous drawing in books, sketchbooks, and on other paper has resulted in an extensive body of work that reads like an epic poem or tapestry of ephemera, now stitched together virtually and seen all at once.

Selections from Aïda, the complete opera. 2001-2014

Anything can become a sketchbook—I’ll draw on whatever is available. I started the practice of drawing on top of printed books in college as a literature major. I would buy books at the local used bookstore and carry them with me to read and draw in at once. It was an effective way to work small and on the go. It also merged my love of the worlds of visual and text. I was continually bouncing back and forth in my own small spectacle of differing language, competing and uniting on the page.

Sometimes I keep working on the same book over a period of years. Sketchbooks are a way to make notations along the way in life. They become goldmines of ideas and inspiration...memories of things noted, people met. I always urge my students to be experimental with their sketchbooks. After all, they are a place to be truly free. There is no judgement on these pages: this is a private place to just be you. You'll thank yourself later.

Left: L'Amour Encore [Love Again], 2018 (book/movie). Publication: a “book of my books;” also a short film. 

Because they are private moments, you can work on sketchbooks without fear. I find that sketchbooks allow for a lot of experimentation. I find pages with staples, white-out, drawings made of nail polish and collage, pages intentionally stained with tea or coffee. I have so much variety, it's fun to go back and revisit the books. Social media can also be an interesting platform to experiment with sketchbooks. I've turned my posts about my notebooks into prints and paintings. 

Selections from a studio visit, 2018. Paintings and prints made from sketchbooks.

Grenoble self-portrait with African masks, Modigliani, 1995 / 2015 is included in the exhibition NYSS: West Coast Conections at Hackett Mill Gallery in San Francisco from August 23^rd to October 19^th 2018. Info dart-interview

A recent biannual event for Maiden L.A.: “Reading Party” was a co-curatorial endeavor where she invited the public to chose pages of sketchbooks to be turned into other mediums. 

Her newly published book, l’amour encore [love again], is now available on Blurb.
website: http://www. maladobaldwin.com
bookart: malado francine baldwin
find her on social media: malado francine