Today was Fiona's and my collaboration day. Our fourth book, our fourth dance. We had decided on a common theme for this enterprise 'Starry Starry Night'. Our plan is/was to each work one half of the page - or one portion of the page even if it was not rigidly a half of the page. The book would then be given back to its maker for completion.
There were no guidelines about paper, or book size, materials ..... anything actually, other than the title. My book is actually fairly large, and before showing it to Fiona a couple of days ago (to give her some time to work out what she planned to do with her part of the pages), I had decided the finished format, the covers and the way it will be bound. Fiona presented me with her pages, small black and whites with a very beautiful, strongly graphic reduction linocut - no hint of the book it will be turned into.
As is our way, we spent a little while together discussing our ideas for our books, the directions we were thinking about and so forth. We also knew that the other person may take the imagery in a completely different way.
Both of us had thought of a number of ideas before our day began - mine beginning rather more timorously than Fiona's but once I started jumbling Fiona's images in amongst the ideas I had brought forward (concept drawings I had made as part of my drawing a day book some time ago) I began to find my way through. Not there yet, but close. I wonder as I work these pages, how Fiona will use them, what her book structure will be. I do know that she will make something fabulous from 'our' work.
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| Fiona's 'Starburst' images. |
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| still think separately ... |
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| by overlaying and mixing up our images and concepts I could see where I could go ... |
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| the hard part was actually working around Fiona's prints |
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| backgrounds in - still some marks to be made .....
We have a week for our work before we hand the books back ..... so watch this space and see how this collaboration works.
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