Sketchbook

There is a sense of privacy between the closed covers of a sketchbook. It can be a place of fresh discovery where something new is hatched or it can serve as an archive. There is a sense of time in a sketchbook. It is a stand in for a calendar with the whiff of the alchemical. This is a place where secrets are stored and revealed.

Is your sketchbook a place to jot things down, dash off a few lines or where you dig in and flesh something out? Is it a travelogue, an encyclopedia, visual treatise or memoir?

Share with us some pages from your current projects, your personal archives, or the mutterings, musings, and legacy from artists you know or have known.

Journal Submission guidelines for Members’ Showcase and featured artists:
We invite UMVA members to submit up to 4 JPEG or png images, (No TIFF files)
—Include an image list and statement or essay in Word doc. Format, not a PDF. No Dropbox.

Label each image file as follows:  your last name_Number of Image_Title_
(if you are submitting for a group put your own last name in first.)

Label your document file names: Last Name_Title

Image list format:  Artist’s Name, “Title of Work”, medium, size, date (optional), photo credit (if not included we assume it is courtesy of the artist).

Please wait until all of your material is compiled to submit.

Size of images: Images should be JPEG files, (approximately 1000 pixels on long side, resolution 72dpi) between 500KB to 1.2MB. 

Put “Sketchbook” in the subject line and submit by email to umvalistings@gmail.com by the December 1st deadline. MAJ will limit the “Members’ Showcase” section to UMVA members who have not been published in the past year.

We are no longer able to accommodate artists’ pre-formatted visual essays. Our editors will lay-out text and images submitted using the new guidelines above.

Maine artists and arts community members can become members of the Union of Maine Visual Artists by clicking HERE. Membership helps support the UMVA’s advocacy and helps make this Maine Arts Journal: UMVA Quarterly possible. Or you can provide direct support to the MAJ via the link under “Support MAJ!” For a free subscription to the MAJ, CLICK HERE or enter your email on the side link under “Subscribe”and a link to this Journal will be mailed to your inbox.

It is the MAJ’s policy to request and then publish image credits. We will not publish images the submitter does not have the right to publish. However, we leave the question of photo credit to the discretion of the submitter when there is no required photo credit (photo by self, image ownership freely given, copyright with contract, copyright expired, work for hire).  It is to be assumed that any uncredited or unlabeled images are the author’s/submitter’s own images. By submitting to the MAJ, you are acknowledging respect for these policies.

Thank you,

MAJ Editorial Board
Natasha Mayers, Dan Kany, Jessica Myer, Nora Tryon, Kathy Weinberg, and Betsy Sholl (poetry editor)