The Sketchbook Project

The Sketchbook Project unites more than 10,000 artists from over 60 countries with a simple call to action: fill a sketchbook and share it with the world. Now in its third year, the Project reflects the DIY ethos of Art House Co-op, a Brooklyn-based gallery dedicated to creating massive international art projects for everyone.

Beginning in March 2011, the Project will tour the country as an innovative mobile library, visiting museums and galleries in Portland, Atlanta, Chicago, Austin, Seattle and San Francisco before returning home to the Brooklyn Art Library. The Library’s unique cataloging system, developed specifically for the Project, allows artists to trace their sketchbook’s journey through many hands, connecting a physical and virtual community that spans the globe.

In just three short years artists Shane Zucker and Steven Peterman have grown Art House Co-op from a bean of a pay-to-play gallery in Decatur, GA into a Brooklyn-based international collective. The pair are passionate about creating exhibitions with a long shelf-life, and to that end have founded what they call The Brooklyn Art Library – a space wherein the yields of their crowd-sourced projects are catalogued and made accessible to anyone curious enough to look. The coolest part? The content of the Library is mobile, and is currently touring America.

Their lofty goal: to bring art to the masses. Their canny method: by getting the masses to make it themselves. By creating and coordinating massive, international art projects that focus thousands of artists on common themes, Art House invites people to generate artifacts that are guaranteed a life outside cramped apartment closets and dusty rural storage units.