{"id":7305,"date":"2018-05-18T11:13:04","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T15:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=7305"},"modified":"2018-05-18T11:18:32","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T15:18:32","slug":"sketchbook-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/05\/18\/sketchbook-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Providence Comics Consortium Invites You To Draw Mutants And Monsters At ‘Sketchbook Church’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Providence Comics Consortium’s<\/a>\u00a0“Sketchbook Church,” writes artist Walker Mettling, is \u201cnot church in the religious way, church in the Sunday morning way. Maybe in the coffee and bagels way.\u201d It’s church if, say, your church involved gathering together with a bunch of people and inventing monsters.<\/p>\n

Since May 6, it\u2019s been meeting Sunday mornings at 11 at Ada Books, 717 Westminster St., Providence, where the Consortium has its printing office. Kids and grownups of all skill levels are welcome. Donations are encouraged (looking at you, cheapskates). Sketchbooks and drawing utensils are provided.<\/p>\n

“Sketchbook Church” offers \u201cgenerative sketchbook games,\u201d explains Mettling, whose personal adventures include being the 2017 Rhode Island School of Design Museum Artist Fellow <\/a>(an artist in residence). “Sketchbook Church” is basically a friendly group drawing session with weirdo prompts. The aim is a \u201cgreater than the sum of its parts mind meld.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Drawing<\/a>
Drawing from the Providence Comics Consortium Sketchbook Church at Ada Books. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mettling says, \u201cI\u2019m kind of sitting on this huge wealth of sketchbook games that we use with the kids in the libraries making the Comics Consortium books.\u201d<\/p>\n

Begun in 2010, the Providence Comics Consortium offers free comic book classes for youth at the Providence Community Libraries and publishes group books and newspapers. It\u2019s toured across the state and farther Away. Also, \u201cthe kids make assignments for adult cartoonists all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

At AS220\u2019s annual Foo Fest in 2014, the Consortium led a parade\u2014including a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 school bus\u2014and drew comics that offered advice in response to festivalgoers\u2019 questions.<\/p>\n

Mettling says, \u201cAnybody who does a workshop is part of the Consortium,\u201d including kids who have since become grownups with beards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people don\u2019t realize how transcendent it can be,\u201d Mettling says. He recalls one boy who participated in a library workshop with his brother, who was generally more of a sports kind of guy. \u201cHaving a tangible way to see what his brother\u2019s mind looked like\u2014I think he didn\u2019t realize how his bother\u2019s imagination differed from his. But through these sketchbook games, he had this epiphany of how his brother\u2019s mind worked the same as his and differently from his.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Drawings<\/a>
Drawings from the Providence Comics Consortium Sketchbook Church at Ada Books. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the years, people have asked Mettling for a version of the workshop for grownups. \u201cHaving a less formal Sunday morning drop-in sketchbook session made more sense,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was less stressful.\u201d<\/p>\n

So welcome to “Sketchbook Church.” Last Sunday morning, with about 15 people in attendance, Mettling says, \u201cWe played a game called \u2018Plant Diseases.\u2019\u201d As a group, they wrote out \u201cdifferent imaginary and real plants\u201d and \u201coccupations\/types of people\u201d on scraps of paper, put them in vessels, then pulled out one of each category and raced to draw the inspiring combination in 30 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat person gets to decide what ailment or what kind of benefit would happen to that person if they were to encounter that kind of plant,\u201d Mettling explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started [the sketchbook game] \u2018Mutation\u2019 with a cactus that had an arm with extra elbows and each person would change it in a way,\u201d Mettling recalls. \u201cIt was an aquatic bunny that also had cactus parts later on. Talking about this stuff, it\u2019s kind of like talking about your dreams later on. It\u2019s hard to translate it into the vibe that you can actually catch doing this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Drawings<\/a>
Drawings from the Providence Comics Consortium Sketchbook Church at Ada Books. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Providence Comics Consortium’s\u00a0“Sketchbook Church,” writes artist Walker Mettling, is \u201cnot church in the religious way, church in the Sunday morning way. Maybe in the coffee and bagels way.\u201d It’s church if, say, your church involved gathering together with a bunch of people and inventing monsters. Since May 6, it\u2019s been meeting Sunday mornings at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,107],"tags":[360,191,72,361],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7305"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7320,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305\/revisions\/7320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}