I was really excited when someone suggested we ask Martha Rich to share sketchbooks. Why hadn’t I thought of her previously?! I have been a big fan of hers for a while. If you’re not familiar with Martha’s work you can check it out here. Her work mostly focuses on beauty or “representations of human insecurity and the lengths humans go to be accepted.” She recently took a roadtrip with Esther Pearl Watson around the country to do a sort of study on beauty which they documented on a blog right here. In Pittsburgh they got their nails air-brushed, in Kansas City they interviewed owners of a lingerie store to find out how important being symmetrical is to being attractive. Making art about it along the way, it seemed like a really interesting project. Martha also has a site she updates regularly with paintings she makes every day (or now once a week) that are extremely reasonably priced. You can check those out here. And if you don’t have the small book of her works Freedom Wigs that I posted about a while back, you can still get a copy here. Now enjoy these beautiful pages! Big thanks to Martha for sharing!

© Julia Rothman 2007