Notebooks

This in-person interview has been transcribed.

What did you bring?

[This is] a stack of notebooks ranging from very small notebooks to very large notebooks. They’re used for a combination of sketching or drawing, or they were for work where I took notes and stuff. I think the collection is from some point in college, when I started using them. I think actually I started keeping my notes since maybe my senior year of college, so it’s really not that old a pile of notebooks, cause that would be around 2016. But turns out I use a lot of paper, and I’ve basically kept all of the notebooks I’ve used since.

How do you choose them?

There was a point in my life where I thought the tools that I purchased kind of represented my identity, as an artist or a designer or whatever. Nowadays I don’t really care. Just — there was a sale at the art store in Central where you could buy two notebooks and get one for free, so like great I’m buying three of these. So it’s kind of how I approach my supplies nowadays, much more utilitarian.

I do have a preference, which is notebooks that are usually heavy duty paper that you can watercolor in, because I’d like to use watercolors and markers and a lot of colored pencils. I like paper that is thick, and that it won’t go through the next page.

Do you remember your first one?

Yeah. I did it because it was for an art class my senior year of college. I think I had tried to use notebooks, and you know I was also taking notes and drawing pictures, but I had never developed an emotional connection until that one class. The teacher had us basically keep a notebook on everything, including taking notes but also assignments on sketching and having a notebook while visiting museums, and I think that really nurtured my attachment to these objects as important things to my identity. I could tell you which one it is because it has a bunch of stickers on it from the museums. It’s a small black one, and I think it has stickers from the Met, and MASS MoCA, so it’s pretty distinct. And it’s a notebook that I made myself.

Can you describe the transition from not having an attachment to having one?

I think it came after having a couple of notebooks already and being able to look through them. That time in my life was artistically speaking a very memorable and enjoyable part of my life where I think I grew a lot. So it was nice to be able to flip through pages and remember things that I’d forgot about. I think that emotional attachment came from this idea of memory, being able to remember things after I had forgotten them. I guess these pieces of paper represent my memory.

What happens if you lose that notebook?

I was going to say I’d feel sad, but in truth I might feel nothing which is maybe even sadder in a big-picture sense because I won’t be able to remember these things that happened to me really well, and the idea of that is sad.

Do you go back through your notebooks and reference your past ideas?

I’m constantly referencing. It’s surprising cause I feel like the common thing is to look back through your work and really hate it but I don’t feel that way with this stuff. Because I think it clearly represents who I was in the past, and not who I am right now. So I can view it from a distant point of view, I guess.

Where do the sketchbooks live in your home?

I have a cube-shaped hole, of an IKEA brand, specifically for all of my notebooks. That cube whole is just… filled to the brim with my notebooks. It’s right next to my bed.

Do you have any memories associated with these notebooks?

Some of [the notebooks] look plain so I will put stickers on them. And from those stickers I know what time-period I had those notebooks. So one notebook that’s just a regular art-brand notebook has those stickers from the San Francisco Public Library and a restaurant in Oakland, and it’s like “Ok, I know exactly when this was”. I used to live in the Bay for a little bit. And the black one with the museums and I know when that’s from. I have one that’s a leaf pattern and a blue one and I remember I purchased those two from an artist at an art festival in Somerville. Some of the notebooks don’t have stickers on them or any unique characteristics and I actually have no idea what time they’re from until I open it. That’s kind of a nice surprise, like a present or something.

Where you always sketching?

I was always doodling, but it was often on loose paper, like assignments given to me or scrap paper. There’s something very special to me about keeping these notebooks that are bound. Because I’m obsessed with this idea of time, and how we as people can only move one way in time except through our memories. It’s nice to be able to flip through notebooks, you can time travel a little bit. I think that’s one of the reasons why I keep this ton of paper with me. I don’t think I consider myself someone who holds onto things all that much, so the reason I have just this giant stack of basically just paper that is very heavy, and I’ve been moving around with it for all these years I think represents this idea of memory and time.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

Recently I’ve been really enjoying using markers to draw or write. We’re talking Crayola, 52 pack markers. I don’t know what it is about them — they’re so colorful, they move really nicely on the paper, and it really helps me overcome that blank-page-scary-energy that you get, because with those markers you can fill up a page really easily.