Sketchbook Vol. I

Sketchbook Vol. I was the first event at Sugarlift's studio in Long Island City, built on a simple idea: visitors put on gloves and turned the pages of artists' sketchbooks themselves, to see where the art starts. Curated by Dina Brodsky, Sugarlift's curator-in-residence, the show brought together the sketchbooks of 14 artists, each shown alongside finished work, and after the opening it stayed on view by appointment through February 16, 2019.

The books ranged from daily visual journals to travel diaries. Vi Luong showed volumes from his 1011 drawings project, 18 sketchbooks filled between 2014 and 2018, while David Morales Hernandez brought the journal of a month in Japan and Dilleen Marsh a book of 58 sketches of southwestern scenes and travels from Utah to New York and down to Texas. Sarah Sager's sketchbook summed up her last year of graduate school, drawn from life in lectures and on nights out. "Sketchbooks are that vital space where an artist is able to freely explore and visually design the fragments of life," wrote Joshua Henderson.

The opening on January 19 featured talks by Brodsky, Guno Park and Henderson about how sketching feeds their work, and the evening before, artists gathered for a pop-up drawing session in Union Square. Later in the month, Nicolas V. Sanchez, Brodsky and Henderson led drawing groups in the Sotheby's galleries, in collaboration with Sotheby's Old Masters department. Moleskine sponsored the show, and Colossal, My Modern Met and The Epoch Times all wrote about it.