_ Dear Carl _ Brooklyn sketchbook project.
- - An ode to Carl Sagan _ 2019.
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Happy to be a part of their newspaper ‘Brooklyn Art Library Times’ edition as a featured artist!
Here’s the full interview:
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This seems to be your first sketchbook in our project. What made you participate?
Liked the idea of traveling library. Also quite a few of my artist friends are a part of this project, I didn’t want to miss out.
Have you always kept a sketchbook?
As far as I remember, yes. It gained more ‘purpose’ from my early 20s when I started printmaking.
Do you have a formal art background/consider yourself an artist?
I am printmaker with graphic design background.
Do you have a specific goal in mind while you’re creating your sketchbook or do you experiment as you go?
For me it is more about collecting scattered ideas into one place. So it is more about experimentation and trying to combine things together I suppose.
Your work consists of a mix of collage and rebinding. Do you mostly work within this medium? Where did you collect the different pages from?
’Dear Carl’ is sort of a love letter to a friend or a person of your admiration. It is a collection of drawings, prints, little writing elements - it is coded, secret to be shared only between sender and receiver, if you may. I have difficulty sticking with one notebook or writing everything down neatly page after page. My preferred format would be notes - small art pieces, reminders, ideas that carry as much importance on their own and also as a part of bigger project. So I collect paper - I store it for years sometimes until I find good use for it.
Your sketchbook centers around the cosmos. How did you come up with the concept and can you speak more to your overall process?
Cosmos / space / night / planets / moon / constellations - force / transition / connectivity / balance / system. There’s a fragile beautiful balance on the line, dark and light that is constantly shifting and again repeating itself. We looked up at the sky and created our own maps in order to navigate our lives - I am fond of idea that we are a part of a bigger thing that we cannot control and need to step aside, just admire it. My creative process takes time - it is stream of consciousness which overwhelms you especially if you are using minimal and abstract style. Symbolism and mythology intertwines and plays huge role in my work.
In your description you wrote, "The vastness and 'emptiness' of space, that is filled with the things we are not aware about or know very little. This sketchbook is a little ode to Carl Sagan who opened the skies for the people below it." Can you talk more about who Carl Sagan was and how he played a role of inspiration for this sketchbook.
I believe for non-science people, Carl Sagan is mostly known for documentary series called ‘Cosmos. A Personal Voyage. He is the person who made me look at the things differently - he made difficult things seem easier, and simple ones actually came to be more multi-layered and complicated. It is hard to explain but he see saw world differently, he was a very poetic scientist - it is fascinating to experience such mixture - and I found his vision really inspiring. Carl was working on Voyager’s Golden Record - it was his team’s ideas for that beautiful selection of elements that went on there and ended up in space to roam through it’s vastness and spread ‘song of the people’. For me he is a rockstar - I admire his creative mind, passion for science and undying love for turtlenecks.
What inspires you while creating?
Nature. It is powerful force that shouldn’t be messed with.
Any advice for someone starting their own sketchbook?
Don’t be afraid of empty pages - just start, everything else will fall into it’s right places.
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Digital version of sketchbook is accessible online:
https://www.sketchbookproject.com/library/24774
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