After tour reflections

Following along with Steven's post from yesterday, I wanted to also reflect on the tour and happenings.

First off, it was great to meet so many of you who've been participating in our projects and all of the people who came to look at the sketchbooks. It was crazy seeing so many people at each show armed with a camera and then seeing all of the photos of the events popping up online afterwords.

To me, the coolest thing about being on the tour, at galleries other than our own, is that it gave me a chance to see the exhibition and project from a whole new angle. When we have shows at Art House I'm stuck running around in the back, helping serve drinks, answering questions, and other forms of TCB (taking care of business). For these 6 shows we just had on the road, I could finally experience the project from the viewer's point of view. Looking through the books in a crowded gallery with hundreds of people all around you looking through thousands of other books, all gushing to their friends about the awesome page they just discovered in the book they were looking at and passing it around brings a whole new dynamic to just viewing them alone in a quiet room. People would grab stacks of 3-5 books and walk away to try to find open space to look through them. By the end of each night, the viewing experience became communal, and the crowds became the curators. With thousands of books on display, it's impossible to view each and every one in a night, but help was given to you in choosing what to look at by the people standing next to you. It was an amazing thing to see.

In addition to the writeups Steven posted, here's some more we've found:

Fecalface.com - Julian Duron's experience at the Brooklyn show at 3rd Ward
Night Moves: The Sketchbook Project @ Chris’ Jazz Cafe (Philadelphia City Paper)
Doodlers Anonymous
Free People blog
Time Out New York (also in print)
Time Out Chicago (also in print)
The Soulard Art Market Blog (from the curators at the St. Louis stop)
BushwickBK.com (Bushwick, Brooklyn)

Also, you can find a whole bunch of pictures on flickr by doing a search for "sketchbook project"

Thank you again to everyone who participated and made this happen! Like Steven said in the previous post, be ready for May/June!

Shane