Today is Tomorrow’s Yesterday by Ruben Sanchez

Nine selected book projects from the first Slanted × Kickstarter Mentoring & Publishing Program are live and ready to be funded. We are happy to present you the individual projects and hope you’ll support one, two, or all of them. ;)

Today is Tomorrow’s Yesterday is a collection of sketches by acclaimed painter and multi-genre artist Ruben Sanchez. After years of treading the globe—from Madrid and Barcelona to New York, Dubai and all the way back—Ruben Sanchez grants his audience a private glimpse into his process. Today is Tomorrow’s Yesterday compiles doodles, drawings, notes, and quotes from Sanchez’s personal sketchbooks in one beautifully crafted hardcover edition.

Ruben Sanchez was born and raised in Madrid (1979), adopted by Barcelona, NYC, and Dubai in the past years. He is a self-taught artist, coming from the subcultures of graffiti and skateboarding. Graphic design and illustration as a background, Ruben was always interested in applying his work onto different materials such wood, resins or ceramics. His work can be found all around the globe as a part of art festivals, commissions, humanitarian projects or international exhibitions but also as any kind of ‘uncommissioned’ works. Interested in the avoidance of symmetry, lack of perfect proportions and vibrant color palettes. Visual balance, strong interactions, messages to depict, chain reactions and connectivity always surrounded by a Mediterranean vibe, in a journey with no destination.

We asked Ruben a few questions about his project:

Your project was selected from nearly 100 submissions to be part of the Slanted × Kickstarter mentoring & publishing program. What did you learn, what helped you the most?
I learnt long time ago that it’s better to live without much expectations. That makes you avoid frustrations and focus on the work 100%, if you have expectations you kind of focus your work to those expectations and loses part of the soul, you know what I mean? I say this because when you make something straight from your heart and brain and you work hard on it, it will find its place organically at some point. I’m lucky that my project found its place in this amazing program. It’s been really cool to have the help and point of view of Slanted, sometimes you are so inside your project that opinions and ideas from 3rd parties like Slanted are received like fresh air.

How did this project come about?
I’ve been told many times that I should do something with my sketchbooks, they have been with me since I got my first diary when I was 12.
They have become my window to express my ideas, feelings, experiences and of course my drawings. So at the end they kind of became artworks by themselves, full of information and emotions. I think it was a good idea to share them in some way. One of the ideas was to make an exhibition but I couldn't really visualize how to show all the different pages and it would be a temporary experience and limited to a specific location, so making a book was a better idea I think.

In which situations and at which places do you feel inspired to draw in your sketchbooks?
Airports, hotels, my studio, cafes all over the world, planes, my home … there’s no specific place for this, I try to have notebooks close to me anytime so I can write down ideas as they come. Sometimes I’m just bored and I start doodling or making some non-sense stuff.

Why should our readers support your project? How do you hope to continue with it?
I think it’s always interesting to see what’s inside an artist’s head. The human being is curious by nature. We buy magazines to know more about people we don’t know. We spy at our neighbors through the windows. We glance at the passenger next to us in the train to see what he/she’s reading. We are always curious about others. This is like opening a window of my studio so anyone can take a look in a way. People who like my work will know more about me through this book, and people who doesn't know me might think oh this is cool or this is interesting or this guy is an ass or whatever.
As I said before, I don’t have expectations so let’s see where this project goes. So far I’m infinitely happy to see the support it’s receiving, reaching the goal in two days. I hope not to disappoint the backers.

Thanks a lot for the insides and we keep our fingers crossed that your project will be financed!