The artists at Project Onward, a makerspace in Bridgeport for artists with cognitive disabilities or mental illnesses, are trying to make an artist book but needs the Awesome Foundations to make our hard work into a reality! Project Onward offers studio space, quality supplies, professional guidance and gallery representation to 45 artists. Many of the artists are Chicago natives and come from all over the city to work in Bridgeport. Their work ranges in medium and style, from bright dotted paintings to realistic cardboard models. The truly exhilarating part about Project Onward is the community support that the artists offer each other. This camaraderie and the makerspace environment lends itself to collaborative projects, yet funding large endeavors such as an artist book is difficult.
To gather our ideas and view examples, we are working with the SAIC Joan Flasch special collections library. Then the book team will pick a theme, layout a format and make/draw/write for the book. Any artist who wishes to be involved with the collaborative project will have a voice in every step from the design to the binding. The book project will act as a catalyst to push each of the artists styles and subject matter because studio can often become repetitious. Our goal is to share our studio community experiences, range of technical styles and diverse voices with the greater Chicagoland area.