Adult coloring books benefit Athens with growing prominence
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Claire Branch, 53, was heading to checkout at the grocery store one afternoon when she absentmindedly picked up a coloring book. It was an impulse buy that led to a newfound hobby. Fond of drawing since she was a child, Branch uses coloring books as a way to revitalize her creative side and to battle chronic bad television.
“Most of the time, I find myself doing it at night because I only like to watch one show at night, and that’s 'Dancing with the Stars,'" Branch said. "So the rest of the week I’m bored, and coloring gives me something to do instead."
Although Branch didn’t start coloring for the trendy appeal, she is happy that it no longer has a stigma as a hobby only for children or senior citizens.
“Coloring books are very popular right now,” said Tatiana Veneruso, director of ATHICA, an independent, nonprofit art gallery in Athens. She’s talking about coloring books for adults, that is.
I remember the excitement felt when given a new coloring book as a child. It felt like endless possibility — to color the moon bright green if I wanted to, the stars pink, the sky violet. I would end up burning through it within two days, regretting after that I didn’t take my time. But then, I grew out of coloring books until I didn’t really think about them anymore. Until a few months ago.
Recently, coloring books for adults have received coverage from national publications like The New York Times, and Amazon.com now has a bestseller list solely for adult coloring books. Currently, Johanna Basford’s “Secret Garden” and “Enchanted Forest” coloring books hold rank in Amazon’s top 10 best sellers of 2015.
The Athens arts community decided to use this growing trend to benefit the Athens community in a creative way. ATHICA is teaming up with local artists and Pixel & Ink Photo Boutique to create quarterly coloring books that will benefit Athens-Clarke County schools. The first volume of this coloring book series was released on Nov. 20 with an accompanying exhibit, “Outside the Lines,” which will run until Dec. 13. The exhibit will feature enlarged versions of some of the drawings from the coloring book — all of which are being contributed by local artists — that the public can color in with supplies ATHICA will provide.
“As a nonprofit gallery, our focus is on showing the work as opposed to selling it,” Veneruso said. “We show challenging, innovative work that may not have traditional appeal.”
The appeal of coloring books for adults can be seen as a product of a search for authenticity as people are growing tired of being attached to technology constantly. Generally when people think of a time where things weren’t so digitally constructed and simulated, thoughts tend to land somewhere during childhood. Coloring books offer an escape from the daily grind of the technological whirlwind we are consumed by.
Some people use coloring books as a means of relaxation or stress reducer when alone, while others make it a social event, meeting up with friends and coloring as an unplugged activity to enjoy together.
“Sadly, a lot of adults feel like they need an excuse to engage in any kind of artistic endeavor," said Janet Geddis, owner of Avid Bookshop in Athens. "Some people think they have to be ‘good’ at art in order to get out the paints or crayons.”
With such a wide-ranging consumer base, adult coloring books open up a market with a lot of potential success and competition. Walking into Avid Bookstore, one can find an entire shelf stocked full with adult coloring books. More popular books feature intricate landscape and cityscape drawings. Some books offer meditative designs with chakra and lotus sketches. Other books specialize in popular television shows such as “Game of Thrones."
That’s the special thing — there’s a coloring book for anyone.
Avid Bookshop added another coloring book to its shelves when the first volume of “Outside the Lines” came out. This past September, Avid hosted a coloring event, “A Colorful Night at Avid,” that brought members of the Athens community together to eat, drink and color. Seventy people attended the coloring night, including foreign exchange students, retirees and parents with their children.
“It was so great to see people who might not ordinarily cross paths hit it off and become friends, at least for a night,” Geddis said. “Focusing on an activity allowed people to mix and mingle without much social anxiety, as they could always just focus on coloring if they got shy or unwilling to talk.”
The ability of an activity as simple as coloring to bring unlikely people together, if only for a while, reflects the potential reach of the adult coloring book trend. ATHICA aspires to tap into that expansive market for the betterment of the entire Athens community, while continuing to support local artists and promote arts education.
For the 2012-2013 academic year, Georgia Council for the Arts compiled a research report finding that, collectively, Georgia public schools offer less access to visual art and music classes than the national average, although Georgia schools still exceed the regional average in access to those programs. Among Georgia public schools, 67 percent offer visual art and music classes, however only 3 percent offer courses in all five arts subject areas — visual art, music, theater, dance and creative writing. Four percent of schools in the state offer no arts education at all.
Athens-Clarke County public schools are regionally and nationally recognized for their music programs. The Cedar Shoals High School concert choir performed at Carnegie Hall in 2009 and 2012, the Clarke Central High School orchestra performed at Disney World in 2010 and the Cedar Shoals High School marching band performed at the 2012 Allstate Sugar Bowl. Despite the music program’s success, arts education in the county still lacks in funding and accessibility compared to national levels.
The quarterly coloring books will benefit a different school in the Athens-Clarke County school system, with the first volume coloring book benefiting Clarke Middle School. The proceeds will provide funding for arts programs that need wider accessibility, more supplies or additional support.
“The donations are up to each school to decide, but our hope is that the money will help bolster a program that's running low on funding, art supplies or other resources,” said Carolyn Crist, co-owner of Pixel & Ink and a collaborator in the project.
