Last month was an easy month. We used to say this in my previous library all the time. Little did we know that the sentence will travel through continents and decades.
The #rutgersurbansketching project is almost over and I am ashamed to realize didn’t have time to create a single sketch in November 2021. Without any talent, it’s easy to find excuses to bail. However, last year I made an effort at least and enjoyed every moment of it.
Instead, choosing to live vicariously, I followed the works of others throughout the whole month. The weekly prompts, online and on campus events, and inspiring works of art seem to have satisfied my creative needs (and I must admit I did work on another creative project in my free time), but I regret not contributing to the project.
Before art librarian Megan Lotts, the project leader of Rutgers Urban Sketching shares her latest experience, here is her message from last year.
The Rutgers Urban Sketching project encouraged the Rutgers-New Brunswick campuses to think about life in new ways during a stressful time. During the pandemic, people are in need of activities, like urban sketching, to help them connect, share, and escape their everyday lives. Sketching scenes from daily life elevated seemingly mundane moments, allowing us to see our own world from a different perspective. Urban sketching also relieves stress, hones observational and analytical skills, and forces us to take a moment to stop and “draw the roses.”
We can argue how the pandemic November of 2021 differs from the pandemic November 2020, because it does. (I especially hate my new role of being the mask police in the library!)
The message is clear: art lives here! Art lives with us at Rutgers, art lives in the Art Library and beyond its walls, art lives on the Cook Campus, art lives around us courtesy of the SEBS Department of Landscape Architecture, art lives during the pandemic.
I am looking forward to see more artwork created during Urban Sketching 2021 in the online exhibit. Hoping for a normal world to return, let’s dream with Megan about the swimming pool.
