Sketchbook Porn: Elizabeth Arzani

Elizabeth Arzani is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living and working in Portland, OR. As a collector of sorts, Arzani constructs narratives from moments of curiosity, absurdity, and potential humor in happenstance. Her impulse to collect and desire to recycle is a search for connection and an attempt to collaborate with the unknown. Working between painting, sculpture and printmaking practices reveals allegorical relationships embedded in materiality. Stories are told in the cracks and creases, stains and rust of physical objects layered with her own mark making. They become site-specific maps of a place, offering a form of communication that extends language. Find more at elizabetharzani.com and @elarzani.

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Tell us about your sketchbook practice. I became serious about sketchbooking after participating in The Sketchbook Project (now sadly defunct). To participate, you paid for a sketchbook, selected a theme and responded by a deadline. I mailed my finished sketchbook with the theme "And then there was none," to their Brooklyn Library to be permanently included in their public collection of sketchbooks. And when The Sketchbook Project Library went on tour, I traveled to visit. The experience of checking out strangers' sketchbooks from around the world inspired me to begin carrying a sketchbook and pen on my person everywhere I went. I learned quickly that it had to be a pen, because when I draw in pencil, I erase everything. Drawing with a pen forced me to practice problem solving and learn how to make every line work, despite the inevitable oops.

What started as a way to become better at drawing eventually became a meditative ritual. Drawing is what saved my art practice. When I had no time, or was without a studio space, I used the "in-between" times to draw in my sketchbook. Staff meetings were my figure drawing sessions. Drawing helped me cope in hospital waiting rooms or kept me company while waiting for an oil change. It grounded me the year I sold everything and moved to a different country. For the last fourteen years I have scanned each of my sketchbooks, creating a digital archive that I can refer back to and translate into printmaking, collages, paintings or inspiration for ceramic sculptures.

How would you describe what happens in your sketchbooks? My sketchbooks primarily consist of pen and ink observational contour line drawings or abstract compositions layered with collage. I like to challenge myself by finding something in my surroundings to respond to. It might be my friend's favorite tea pot drawn while dog sitting, or my sister's frog upholstered chair, window views at a cafe or things left on the table. It can be the middle seat of airplanes, art deco architecture at a Viennese Spa (because cameras aren't allowed), or compositions made by the tracing paper shapes leftover from collage projects tucked in the folder at the back of my sketchbook. What happens in my sketchbook becomes a visual journal with each drawing given a title and dated.

What does your sketchbook allow you to do that is different from the work of your finished creations? My drawings feel safe bound in a book. Something changes about them when they become larger or exist on a loose sheet of paper. While my drawings sometimes are translated into etchings, screen prints, linocut prints or inform paintings or collages, my raw fine line drawings primarily exist in my sketchbooks.

What are your tools? All of my sketchbooks are moleskin (with a few exceptions). I primarily draw with a pilot precise pen, because I like how the ink flows, but I also wouldn't recommend this pen, because it leaks easily. I mainly use it for sentimental reasons, because it was the pen my grandfather always used to fill in crossword puzzles with. If I am looking for a good non smearing, permanent, waterproof pen, I like the Staedtler and Faber-Castell brands. Their brush pens are a fun change of pace when I want to switch things up. A friend also gifted me a nice leather pencil pouch, so I use this now to carry a few pen options, and a glue stick (but Elmer's or Uhu only—for whatever reason the Blick brand glue stick is terrible). I feel fancy having a leather pouch for my glue sticks and pens.

If you're an artist and would like to show yours, GO TO: SEND US YOUR SKETCHBOOK PORN

Better yet, if we choose to share your submission, your sketches will be posted on PublicDisplay.ART and remain posted to our website, so you can link and share it on your portfolio, etc. AND WE'LL PAY YOU $100!