She “fill(s) the page with quick concepts and general shapes, not laboring over any of them.” Once images are on the page, “I often have a diving board I’m thinking about. One image catches my eye. I start with that and it creates a domino effect” for further making.

Though Beth will abandon about 90% of what she’s sketched, the books offer a place of respite. She refers to them to work out ideas, help become “unstuck,” play with shapes and, sometimes, try out drawing exercises. During the pandemic, she was stuck. She created a clear and simple exercise: a “squish painting.” Pigment poured on a page and squished by its adjacent page left her with two almost identical images. The immediacy Beth normally likes to work with was slowed by the necessity of waiting for paint to dry so she could draw over the images. “I need something of my own that is spontaneous and that I can’t control and that I have to manage.” In her sketchbook, she was creating order and structure with patience and a practice of restraint, just like she has been living in and with the pandemic.

Beth is also an art educator. Even though she is passionate about her job, she has also experienced times when going to the studio was not possible because of its demands. Like other artists, she has made her sketchbook a portable studio. She doesn’t have to wait for a long stretch of time to sketch, nor does she have to physically be in her studio. Her book “allows you to go back to a thought, an impulse. It’s a thread of a conversation that you can pick up.”

lorrie fredette

lorrie fredette