Plague diary May 26 -- leave me alone

Memorial Day weekend is traditionally the official kickoff to summer.  People have picnics and ballgames, and afterwards you can correctly wear white shoes, but only till Labor Day.  Across the country the pandemic has not put much of a crimp into these traditional activities, except maybe the shoes.  I think it's way too soon, but all weekend we've seen scary photos of mostly non-masked people, obviously starved for human society, crammed into restaurants and bars and beaches and all sorts of public places.  I suppose in two weeks we'll see the spike in coronavirus cases, because death rarely takes holidays the way we stupid people do.

But just as a lot of people are eager to take their pandemic response to a new level, I find myself moving in the other direction.  I'm kind of tired of reaching out to other people for social contact.  I've spent many an hour on the phone with friends and family and neighbors talking about what we're doing in seclusion; little of those conversations has been stimulating, affirmative, optimistic, amusing or even very interesting. 

I hear the same words coming out of my mouth when talking to my sister-in-law that came out of my mouth days before talking to my art pal.  I search for something different to talk about, but don't have the energy to launch into a discussion of the book I just read or the art project I'm working on.  I just want to hang up the phone and go into the studio by myself.

I had two more zoom meetings last week, and though the technology is getting a little bit easier, I still don't like it, and certainly don't crave it.  I have found that alcohol helps.

I wrote last month about two different art exchanges that I signed up for in the early days of lockdown, when it seemed like a good idea to connect with others and swap work.  One was among four of us who regularly get together in person but haven't had a meeting since March.  The other was among strangers, a few of whom are several levels above me in the art world food chain, and I sent my work to them with some trepidation.

Just this week I sent off the last two projects in these exchanges, and while I've had a lot of fun making and receiving things, I am glad this is over.  It allowed me to work on some little sculptures

as studies in technique for ideas that have been brewing for a while.  In particular, I would like to make a bunch of the clay heads and display them in some kind of larger array.

Of all the pieces I sent and received in the stranger artist exchange, here's my favorite, a three-step exquisite corpse exercise.  I had step one, and sent this off, leaving plenty of room for additions:

 

The next artist in the chain added the drawing of the woman, and finally the third added pale beige stitching to put more "pictures" on the wall.  (Hard to see in this screen grab, but you can find a better image on instagram.)

But now playtime is over, and I am relieved.  I responded to the invitations because early in the pandemic, connection seemed important; now less so, at least for me.

I hope this new phase of withdrawal isn't going to send me into a funk.  I need to get down in the studio and make art.

What makes it "rise to be art"?

Recently a reader left a comment on my blog:  "One of your entries was about how there were many collages and how only few 'rose to be art.'  How did they?  How did you decide?  I would really like you to discuss this more, sometime."

I had talked about making a fabric collage every month in 2015 as parallel play with my great friend and art pal Uta Lenk.  Each month, we each opened an identical envelope of three or four miscellaneous bits and pieces, and had to use them all in a collage.  The collages, of course, looked very different, but part of the fun was trying to find where the same bits showed up in each piece.

August -- Uta

August -- Kathy

For instance, in August you can find the hand-dyed red fabric in both pieces, along with a shiny ring, a silver button and some red cord.  There's red netting (Uta wadded hers up while I mostly spread mine out) and ribbon with a woven rose (Uta used the back side, mainly pink, while I used the right side, mainly white).

I think my August collage is cute, and indeed, I might even hang it in the gallery to see if anybody needs to buy a Valentine's Day present, but I see it more as a clever challenge to use the random bits than as an intentional piece of art.  You can see how I kind of hid the silver button in the bottom right corner -- not sure whether it would have made it into the composition if it hadn't been in the envelope, and the red ring at center bottom was probably added just to make the silver button look more at home.

April -- Kathy

Here's another that I rate as a clever solution to what was in the envelope: a white lace medallion, some selvages from blue hand-dyed fabric, and four little metal L-shaped brackets.  With the help of a lot of hand stitching, this turned into an attractive floral composition, but it probably would have been better if the blue strips had been ribbons or torn silk or mulberry paper.  And the metal brackets, doing their best in a bad situation, would probably never have made it into the collage if I were making "art" instead of playing a game.

Many fiber artists are drawn to challenge projects in which they are given specific fabrics to use.  Because fabric is so distinctive in appearance, even when cut into smaller bits, it's particularly suited to this kind of challenge.  (It doesn't work in other mediums -- think if painters were each given a tube of alizarin crimson and challenged to use it.  Lame.)  And especially if the fabrics are beautiful, it's hard to resist this kind of temptation.  But the work that results is often identifiable as stemming from a challenge rather than from an artistic vision.

If you're lucky, you can achieve both, and out of my 12 collages, I judge three or four to be pretty good.  I'll show them in my next post.

Fabric collage -- out in public

In 2015 I did a collaborative art project with my dear friend Uta Lenk, who lives in Germany.  We each prepared six sets of fabric stuff -- one envelope to me, an identical envelope to her.  The envelopes contained three or four bits and pieces of fabric, lace, cord, maybe a button or bead, and miscellaneous things we found in our respective studios.  We exchanged the envelopes and then each month we made a fabric collage that had to use everything in the envelope plus whatever else we might want to add.  For coherence, I chose to stitch all my collages onto a neutral linen background, which in turn was stitches to the deep gray mat board.

We had fun doing the project, but on my part I would say that only four or five of the twelve rose to the level of art.  As with so many experiments in a new method or procedure, it takes a while to find your way.  But three of them seemed good enough to put in frames for the new show at PYRO Gallery.

Gold Star

Only one hitch -- Uta and I had made our collages to fit onto 8x12" mat board, and I couldn't find frames in that size.  So I got 9x12 frames and eked out the width with strips of colored paper. 

Pig Newton

If I were starting from scratch I'd prefer the mat board the same size as the frame, but the stripes do add a jaunty air, especially when all three collages are hung together.

By the way, I don't like to put fabric under glass, so I put the collages into the frames naked.  I know there are some drawbacks to this approach in that the work can get dusty, but I didn't want to pop for expensive shadowbox frames that would keep the glass forward off the 3-D collages.  I hope it works out well.

Slick Dude

If you'd like to see all our collages from that project, click here.

Outsourcing the quilting 3 -- show time!

I've been commenting on the recent long discussion on the SAQA email list regarding the outsourcing of tasks such as quilting to other people.  Last week I wrote about whether this counts as collaboration (my thought was generally no) and whether and how you should give credit to some or all of the people who help you.  But some readers may well have read that post and thought SO WHAT?

A few people who commented on this blog and on the SAQA list talked about "giving credit" as a factor of what you write on the label of the quilt.  Since I don't put labels on my quilts, that's not a question I engage on.  What I mainly think about is entering shows, and that's where it can get complicated.

The first decision is how you fill in the first box on the entry form -- do you put your own name alone, or put two names?  Some shows are pickier than others about how to deal with more than one maker.  As I mentioned last week, my last Quilt National piece was quilted by somebody else, and I put my own name as the artist and wrote "machine quilted by M J Kinman" in the materials and techniques field.

But some shows have stricter rules.  In SAQA shows: "Collaborative work is allowed as long as all individuals (including a long arm quilter) are current SAQA members. The collaborative piece is entered as a separate work under the names of all collaborating artists (a field is included on the entry form)."   So if your quilter isn't a member, you either induce her to join or the quilt can't be entered.

Somebody wrote on the SAQA list: "IQF (the Houston show) has a policy of not accepting quilts with work for hire. So if a long arm quilter is paid for their work it cannot be entered into the World of Beauty show. The quilt must be a "collaboration" between the designer and quilter."  That has potential problems, too -- such as how you find a quilter who is willing to work for nothing, on the off chance that the work may win a prize.  I have trouble understanding what this rule is supposed to accomplish.  Seems to me it either encourages exploitation of quilters, or encourages lying.  And of course leads to problems if there is a prize, and how it will be split.

Seems to me that we in the art/quilt world retain a lot of the habits of the traditional quilt world, such as our love for shows and prizes.  And categories!!  Boy, do we love our categories!!

One comment on the list:  "Do most shows have separate categories for quilts quilted on domestic machines as compared to long arm? If they don't I definitely think they should have because there is a vast difference in what one can do on a long arm machine compared to a small machine."

Somebody else reported that her local quilt show has different awards for the person who makes the quilt top and the person who quilts it, and the awards are further subdivided by the kind of machine used to do the quilting, such as "Machine Quilting -- Longarm/Computer Assisted."

I think many shows have way, way too many categories, whether the slice-and-dice refers to subject matter -- different boxes for people, pets, nature, architecture, and heaven knows what else -- or to size or to method of execution.  Maybe there's a difference in what you can do on a long arm machine compared to a small machine, but why should they be judged separately?  Same with hand-quilting compared to machine-quilting.

And there's a long slippery slope ahead of making those distinctions. Should we next have different categories for sit-down and stand-up longarm machines?  For machines with a 16-inch harp and those with a 13-inch harp?  For machines with a stitch regulator and those simply guided by hand?  For quilting with a walking foot and quilting with a darning foot?  For hand-quilting in a hoop and in a frame and just pooled in your lap?  For cutting with a scissors and cutting with a rotary cutter?  For cutting with a rotary cutter with and without a ruler?  For quilters who wear bifocals and those who wear contact lenses?  For quilters who have a big studio and those who work on the kitchen table?  Yes, there's a difference in what you can do with all these binaries, but so what?

Fortunately the shows that I'm most interested in entering don't do this kind of silliness.  All the quilts go in the same basket and are judged against one another, no matter how they were made and by whom.  And that's where I circle back to after all the discussion about whether you should have somebody else help you with your quilts.

Make a quilt.  Get help if you need it.  Pay the person who helps you a decent wage.  Give credit if it's a contribution that made a visible difference.  It's not that hard.

Outsourcing the quilting 2 -- is it collaboration?

In the long discussion on the SAQA list about having somebody else quilt for you, there was a wide range of opinion about whether the quilter should be treated as an equal partner.  A few of the commenters believe that anybody who touches a quilt becomes a collaborator, an artist whose vision is just as important as that of the person who made the top.

One comment was:  "Even adding binding is an art and a major component of any successful work, therefore since part of a quilt is the binding, in my opinion if another person has contributed this, then this piece should be considered a 2-person collaboration."

This argument strikes me as kind of silly.  First off, binding is not a major component of any work, successful or not.  (Not to mention that binding is kind of passe in the art/quilt world, where the more common finish is to face the edges.)  More important, no matter how beautifully the binding is sewed on, it rarely involves artistry -- in other words, decisions to be made, choices, alternatives weighed to achieve just the right effect.  OK, if the binder chooses the color and width, and whether to miter the corners or not, that might make a tiny difference in the way the quilt looks, but no more.

And where does it end?  Do you give credit if your cleaning lady did the wash after you hand-dyed your fabric?  Do you credit your granddaughter who wound the bobbins?  Do you credit the clerk in the fabric store who rooted around in the back room to find a bolt of the perfect orange?  Do you credit your husband for cutting the hanging stick and affixing the eye hooks?  Do you credit your critique group for helping you decide whether you needed more of that perfect orange?  I say none of the above.

Sometimes when other people help you they have indeed contributed to the art.  Sometimes they haven't.  I think the former should be credited; the latter shouldn't.

When it comes to quilting, there are definitely times when your helper does contribute to the artistic vision.  But there's a difference between skill and artistry; skill is when somebody does a technically beautiful job of what they're told to do, artistry is when somebody's own ideas are part of the mix.

I'll give two examples from my own experience.

Several years ago Nancy Crow, who does none of her own quilting, asked me to machine quilt some smaller pieces.  She had been working exclusively with hand-quilters but wanted to explore whether machine quilting would allow her to finish more work, and more quickly.  She gave me detailed instructions, complete with a diagram of each quilt showing the direction of the quilting lines and the thread colors for each sector.  She sent me the thread, the batting and the backing.  I was told to stitch parallel lines somewhere between 1/4 and 3/8 inches apart, and since her shapes were of course not perfect rectangles, I had to use my considerable mathematical skills to make sure the lines were the right distance apart all the way from top to bottom, closer together in the narrow places and farther apart in the wide places.  That was the limit of my "artistic input."

Nancy Crow, Constructions 90, 2007; machine quilted by Kathleen Loomis














She was gracious to put my name in small type someplace in the credits when the quilts were shown and published, but certainly not as a collaborator, nor did I expect that.

A couple of times I have had people quilt my tops.  On my large piece Entropy, I had no clear idea of how it should be quilted, even after working on it for several months.  I discussed it at length with M J Kinman, my friend and quilter, and after we came to no conclusions, she took some leftover piecing and experimented with several different designs.  The one I chose was her invention, and I went with it because its seismographic zigzags complemented the concept, and because she thought she could get into a rhythm and make it work.  Had I done my own quilting I would probably have come up with something quite different, but I was willing to turn it over and be happy with whatever she did.

Kathleen Loomis, Entropy, 2014; machine quilted by M J Kinman (detail below)

Partly this decision showed my confidence in M J's abilities and artistic sense, but partly it simply reflected the fact that on a very large and complicated quilt, I didn't think the quilting was going to be all that visible.  As long as it was neat and consistent I really didn't care that much.  My emotional investment was in the design, not the quilting. I wanted the quilt to be done.

When the piece was accepted into Quilt National '15 I wrote in "Machine quilted by M J Kinman" in the box for techniques, and that's how it appeared in the catalog and signage for the exhibit.  That's exactly the way Nancy Crow credited me, and yet M J had more artistic input on my piece than I did on Nancy's.

But I would say neither of these encounters was a collaboration.  To me, collaboration means that both partners are in on the thinking and the decision-making from the very beginning.

What do you think?

Good save!

Several years ago I participated in a kind of round robin quilt design project organized by Terry Jarrard-Dimond.  After she sewed the finished composition together, I asked her if I could have the leftovers, because I just love sewing leftovers into quilts, especially leftovers from other people's projects.  I always think that the energy those others put into their work carries over and gives my work a new aura that I wouldn't get entirely on my own.

I sewed those leftovers into two separate quilt tops (see them here) and eventually quilted and finished one of the tops (see it here).  But the second top languished.  It ended up in my workshop box, being shlepped around to workshops around the country so people could see the back side of my fine line piecing.

Here it is on the wall when I taught at the Crow Barn last fall.

My students wondered why I had never finished it, and we talked about its compositional failures as an object lesson.  I said I didn't think the top half really matched the bottom half, and I didn't have enough of the blue and gray leftovers to really give those colors an adequate presence in the quilt.  I said I loved the yellow area at the top -- and then I blurted out "I really should cut this into two pieces!"

You have probably had such an experience yourself, where you are surprised to hear what comes out of your own mouth, and later realize that it was true.

So as the workshop went on, I took my seam ripper and opened the quilt top into two pieces.  Earlier this year I got both of them quilted and finished.

Fine line piecing has always reminded me of aerial landscapes, and these have names to reflect that.  I don't know if I would try to exhibit them as a pair, but that's a possibility.

Left Coast, 2015

Flyover State, 2015

It's taken almost five years to progress from leftovers to finished art, but I'm happy with these.  I've always believed that if you wait long enough, and keep your work within view, it will tell you what it wants to become.  And that's what happened here.

A year of found art

You know I'm a devotee of regular art -- projects in which you commit to making something every day, week or month according to the rules set at the outset.  I've been doing daily art every year since 2003, which you can check out at my other blog.  These projects have been my personal activities, but for some time I've also had the pleasure of doing regular art with a partner, Uta Lenk, my quilting pal in Germany.

We started out in 2010 and 2011 by exchanging emails every day, each with at least one photo.  Then in 2013 we did thirteen posts, each consisting of thirteen images of thirteen objects.

Last year we changed the rules and exchanged photos of "found art" --  accidental patterns and compositions created by man or nature and discovered by camera-carrying observers.  We had both enjoyed taking this kind of picture in the past, so we didn't have to search very hard to come up with our weekly contributions.

One of my favorite places to find found art is on the sides of dumpsters.  They get scratched up by rough handling, then they rust in the scratches, they attract graffiti, and occasionally they get painted over, yielding surfaces that remind me of Pollock or Rothko.

One of Uta's favorite subjects is reflections, and she's much better than I am at finding them.

I'm posting our found art to the blog we started in 2013, Dreizehn Thirteens, in case you want to see what we have been up to on both these projects.

And yes, we're doing a joint project this year too, but for now it's just between the two of us.  We'll fill you in later.

Dreizehn thirteens

Perhaps you remember the early years of this century, and the fascination that many people had over the dates of 1/1/01, 2/2/02, etc.  For a while there it was old hat -- heck, every year you got a new one -- but people realized that the party was going to end on 12/12/12.  So on that day, a lot of people on the Quiltart list did twelve twelves on their blogs.

After checking out several of those posts, I decided to run down to the studio and do one myself.  And then my friend Uta Lenk left a comment on the blog, "Now wouldn't that be a new Daily Art project for 2013?  13 thirteens for thirteen - what - weeks, months?"

Uta and I share an enthusiasm for daily art, projects in which you commit to following the rules every day, week, or whatever.  She has documented several on her blog, including photographing her special tree every day in different weather, light and seasonal conditions; and finding a specified color each day to photograph.  This year she's taking a photo every day at high noon.

In 2010 and 2011 Uta and I did a year-long project called Daily Mail with very simple rules: every day, each one would send the other an email with one or more pictures attached.  I wrote about that  here and here and here.  We both enjoyed it so much that her comment about the twelve twelves immediately led me to issue a challenge: we would do thirteen thirteens during 2013, posting every fourth Tuesday.

Unlike our Daily Mail project, in which the photos were frequently accompanied by commentary and discussion, here we said hardly anything.

The blog was private during the year of the project, but now that it's complete -- that's 169 thirteens for each of us, or 4,394 things included in the collections -- we'd like to share it with you.  

Since Uta lives in Germany and I live in the US, we went bilingual with the title of the blog: Dreizehn Thirteens.  Please visit us and check out all our thirteens!

(The photos you see here are a bonus -- despite lurking about in parking lots for several months, I didn't get 13 pictures until the year was over, so never posted this set.)

Good news from Houston

A quick recap of ancient history:

In 2005 I started a quilt in a Nancy Crow workshop that never got finished.  In 2011 I wrote about it in my blog, eliciting a comment from a reader, Norma Schlager, that she really liked it.  She said "So don't throw it away.  You can always send it to me VBG."

So I did.  Norma finished the quilt and it looked great, and entered it in the International Quilt Festival competition, where it was accepted, and it won an award!  Last night the winners were announced and "Brown Planet a Collaboration" got third prize in the Art -- Abstract, Large category.

Norma was there to accept the award, which is only fitting because she did most of the work to turn the quilt from idea to reality.  I feel proud, but kind of like the mother who watches her child be valedictorian.  Sure, he wouldn't been there without me, but it wasn't me who actually did the deed.

So congratulations to Norma!

And a quick recap of more recent history:

In June I wrote a petulant blog post about how nobody loved me, everybody hated me, and I was going to go eat worms.  Among other petty slights, I complained that shows couldn't get my name right -- although I go by Kathy 99 percent of the time, including in person and in my blogs, I like to be called Kathleen in "official" usage.  Such as when my work is displayed in a show or gallery.

Norma, my collaborator and faithful blog reader, immediately wrote back, "Oh, oh!  When I entered our piece into Houston, I put down your name as Kathy!  Sorry!  If it gets accepted I will see if it can be changed."  So after it was accepted, she contacted the show organizers and was assured that it would be shown as Kathleen.

Guess what -- it wasn't.  Every silver lining has a cloud.

Collaboration in the big leagues 2

Yesterday I wrote about a "collaborative project" memorialized in the New York Times, featuring an "artist" who stole his friends' work for a show.

Today's article on collaboration is a review of an exhibit at a New York gallery that reminds me of those old movies -- hey kids, let's put on a show!

Seems that an artist thought up a nifty idea and invited 13 of her friends over for an art party. They set up an assembly line and produced 40 paintings, each pretty much the same as the others.

Here's how the reviewer describes it:  "(Artist A) got things rolling with a large gray shape that seems to have suggested to several other participants a Mr. Potato Head waiting to happen.  (B) added eyes and nose.  (C) applied ears.  (D) contributed bright red glasses frames and (E) provided a halo.  (F), (G) and (H), as well as (I), surrounded this character with various abstract elements in colored pencil, brown paint, red and magenta silk-screen and black ink.  (J), (K), (L), and (M) made various physical interventions using yarn, string, fabric and a pen knife.  (N) collaged an image of potatoes for Mr. Potato Head's mouth, until supplies ran out and he substituted pictures of other produce.  (O) whispered an insult into each canvas and applied a Band-Aid."

Doesn't that sound like good fun?  Do you suppose it was fueled by an alcoholic beverage or two?  I'm sure it was, on both counts, but is it art?  The reviewer didn't think so.  "Apparently there was no one in charge of quality control," she wrote.  What a delicate way to put it.

Untitled, 2013, collaborative painting  















So my question is very similar to my question yesterday -- what was the gallery owner thinking?  Aren't there enough artists out there making real art, one or two of whom would give their left arm for a New York show?  And what was Roberta Smith, the fine art critic for the Times, thinking when she wrote this review instead of tearing up her notes and taking the rest of the day off?

I am not terribly upset that the big-time art world has questionable priorities.  I know that it rewards some people who arguably don't deserve it, because they hit the lottery and somehow got onto the gallery circuit.

But every now and then it gets so ridiculous and self-indulgent that I wonder where all the grown-ups have gone.

"Collaboration" in the big leagues 1

Faithful readers of my blog will recall that I am enamored of collaboration, always a sucker for a chance to match wits with a fellow artist.  So imagine my interest to read about art collaboration in the big-time art world (by which I mean written about in the New York Times).  Going through some old newspapers I found two articles that I want to share with you.

The first is a glowing story about a guy whose new show consists of works that he "meticulously stole from 77 artists: paintings, sculptures, sketchbooks, video, architectural objects, artmaking devices and more.  Equal parts group show and conceptual installation, prank and boundary-pusher, it raises messy art world questions about aesthetic ownership and influence, the division between curator and artist, and the value of nontraditional and repurposed work."

That's right -- this guy, whom I'd rather not make even more famous by naming, went around to his friends' studios and stole something while they were getting a glass of water or answering the phone. After he started this "project" he described it to a gallery owner, who immediately offered him a show. She explains: "one of our missions is to bring the creative community together, and we're very interested in process -- in terms of this show, each artist's individual practice and how they influence each other."  She says she thinks of the artist/perp as both curator and conceptual artist, because "He's very thoughtful about each acquisition."

The artists whose work was stolen all thought this was a jolly endeavor, the story tells us.

So isn't this a great idea?  Don't just steal your friends' ideas, steal the whole damn painting.  The story goes on at length about how this artist has such a hard time coming up with ideas that he's forever visiting psychics, bugging his friends, even paying one of them $200 for a suggestion.  Don't you just want to hug him, he's so dim-wittedly adorable?

Sorry, folks, but it makes me want to puke.  Shame on this dope, but twice shame on the gallery owner. If  she thinks "bringing the creative community together" means facilitating theft, and if carefully choosing what you're going to steal proves what a great artist you are, then I think she needs a crash course in remedial ethics.  And shame on the NYTimes writer for glamorizing the whole thing:  not only does this raise messy questions about aesthetic ownership, how about plain old it's-my-piece-of-paper ownership?

Tune in tomorrow for another New York Times take on collaboration.

Collaboration -- some unhappy campers

I wrote yesterday about how the key to a successful blind collaboration -- one where you don't talk to your fellow artist (or even know who it is) when you hand over part one of the work -- is to have no fixed expectations of what that person will do to it in part two.

I was a happy camper when I saw what happened to the piece I started.  But some people in the show weren't.  Take a look at what happened to four of them, and see if you agree.

Exhibit A: a painted ceramic mask

Here's how the work was finished:  the mask was broken into pieces and arranged in a glass bowl with bark, moss, grass, flowers and pebbles

Exhibit B: a hollow ball turned from spalted maple

Here's how the work was finished:  the ball was broken apart, covered with encaustic wax, burned, filled with dirt and planted with flowers; photos were made at each stage and displayed as the finished piece

Exhibit C: a mixed-media assemblage including doll heads and a vintage globe collaged with photos

Here's how the work was finished:  the globe was cut in two, wrapped with yarn, filled with soil and rocks, and planted with thyme and basil

Exhibit D:  a photoshop creation, printed up fairly large

Here's how the work was finished: the photo was sliced into pieces, some of which were mounted on a wood support, overlaid with some yellow yarn wrapped around nails to make an architectural line about a half inch in front of the support.

Two of the part-one artists were upset and stomped out of the opening reception.  Another announced to the world, when participating artists were invited to make remarks, that he would never do anything like this again.  I don't know what the fourth one thought.

So what do you think?  Would you have stomped out?  I'll tell you my opinion after I've heard yours.

Collaboration -- second thoughts

I wrote last month about a project that I was involved with, where one artist started a piece, then turned it over to a collaborator to finish.  I wish I could say that everybody who participated was thrilled with  what happened, but that wasn't so.  I've thought about this and talked about it with some of my cohorts, and it seems to be an object lesson in expectations.

As I review my own experience with the project, I realize that when I worked on part one, I visualized too far ahead.  In effect, I completed three-quarters of the piece, leaving one-quarter blank for my collaborator to fill in.  I expected her to work in that space, and perhaps add some extra stuff in the emptier spaces of "my" three-quarters.

What I did not expect was that she would work not only in the empty space but over the top of "my" spaces.  Nor that she would remove some parts of my composition.

At first I was annoyed to see what had happened to the piece.  But 24 hours later I had revised my opinion and decided the finished piece was satisfactory.

I also decided that if I were to participate in another such project in the future -- which I would be very happy to do -- I would do a few things different.  First, I wouldn't finish so much of the piece before handing it on.  Second, I wouldn't get so clear a picture in my mind of how it might be finished by somebody else.

A wise therapist once told me, "The key to happy parenthood is lowered expectations."  In the context of art collaborations -- especially blind ones, where you don't have a chance to talk to your co-worker -- I think the key to happiness is to have no expectations at all.

One of the most successful pieces in the show, I thought, was this collaboration, started by Sarah Duncan, who simply provided three landscape photographs printed onto fabric, without mounting them, sewing them together or doing anything else to indicate how the piece should be finished.  In other words, she made raw materials for her collaborator.

Here's what Jacque Parsley did with the photos:

Here's another success, in my opinion.  The part-one artist, Keith Kleespies, turned in a paper construction with images printed or drawn onto different kinds of paper.  Although he hadn't thought of this as "making raw materials," that's the way it turned out.

To his surprise, Karissa Moll took apart the construction and saved only one bit of it, the red page at the left end.  She scanned in the rest of the images and put them on an old window.

But other collaborations weren't as successful -- at least if you asked the part-one artists.  I'll show you a few in a subsequent post.

Collaboration 5

Yesterday I wrote about my middle-of-the-night realization that my collaborative piece was crap.  The next morning I went into my studio and took off the thread-drawing, which I liked a lot, parking it on my design wall for a future use.  I cut away some of the selvages.  I took the hand and relocated it to a much better place.

The rules for the project stated that "you should make additions and subtractions to the piece as you see appropriate," and I decided I had to subtract before I could add.

I cut the pegboard into a much smaller size.

I got more acrylic yarn and stitched over the top of the preexisting raccoon/pencil, to complete the cross-stitch pattern across the entire piece.

Then I painted over the stitching so all I had was texture and a bit of color peeking through, but neither pencil nor raccoon.

Finally I added some found objects and called it a day.

To respect my collaborator, who was revealed to be Lelia Rechtin, I decided to pretty much keep the original title, even though it still mystified me.  I shortened it a bit to "Everything In Its Hands."

I found this exercise frustrating, but a lot of fun.  It's very difficult to read somebody else's mind and try to figure out their intentions, so you can attempt to complete their work rather than just burn it down and build your own work on its ashes.  Not sure I achieved that, and not sure that either of us successfully interpreted the theme of "cosmopolitan localism."

But I did use a found object that had (most of) the name of our city in it.  It may not be cosmopolitan, but it is local.