Collaboration

Central to what gets done here in the studio is the spirit and fact of collaboration. The idea of the solitary artist working seems joyless. I know it’s not but there is something to working with other people, exchanging ideas and labor that is very rewarding. Working on big monotypes or books has logistical problems that an extra person solves but even more so, the discussions that occur during the work can fuel so much.

Everyone I have worked with brings their individual opinions and aesthetics into the work. When I first started working on books with monotypes, I would get overwhelmed by the decisions in sequencing and editiong. Michelle was wonderful at that, otherwise many of those books would never have happened. Now, plans for the next book are worked out between Liz and I, each of us sounding off ideas, ways to make the project unique. Also she is the letterpress person, without her that does not happen.

Much like making music, working with others allows for ideas to develop in the space of one’s own plans.

In the beginning

I was not a book artist or a printmaker. I was a hardcore painter, a true believer and convinced that that would be my path. Over the years I was proven wrong many times and now find myself a printmaker specializing in monotypes and a book artist. With my monotypes I push the idea of size and markmaking and I find the books to be a chance to explore markmaking and narrative on a more intimate level.

I find I like the way viewers approach books; the way they handle the page and can engage in the material aesthetic in ways that a print in a frame does not allow. Also the narrative compels me, the associations between pages that can create visual surprises, treats.

The journey into book arts began with poet Toni Wynn contacting me in 1996 to work together on a portfolio of prints and poetry entitled “Reckoning”. Next in 2002 I began a project with poet Sharon Coleman entitled “Flowers from the Holy Lands”. That began a life long collaboration with Sharon.

I let the idea of books move to the back burner until 2016 when I was at a book show with artists Mei Hsuan Jiang and Lian Ng. Afterwards we were talking about the books we had seen and all the scraps of rejected monotypes in my studio and next thing I knew Mei Hsuan and I were working on the Vocabulary Books and the first accordion books. I found it to be the perfect counterpoint to my large monotypes and have continued working on books since then. After a while I decided to move to a case bound structure and a more rigorous project with artist/poet Liz McCall. This became the Fog Frac/tured Pangea. The extra monotypes generated here lead me to doing the Fragments. Now a new project along the lines of the Fog Frac/tured Pangea is being discussed for this year. Onward.