In creating prints, I often have the finished image in mind before setting out creating it. I don’t naturally work in this way, but many printmaking methods require this kind of planning and preparation, especially woodblock printmaking. With this collaboration though, I was able to free myself up from these usual constraints. I drew directly onto plywood, carved and printed the image, but then gave myself the freedom to experiment with the image by cutting, deconstructing, rearranging, and collaging the image. This technique suits the way I make images much more than planning and perfecting each stage. It allowed me to free up and change my mind, making decisions based on what worked together. The prints I discarded for the first stage of the collaboration, I kept aside, not ruling them out completely in working later on.
With the objective of producing 10 prints each in the first month of the residency at Kala, time began to become a factor in the making. We decided that we each needed longer to complete our aim of 10 so, aware of how quickly the time was passing, we agreed to a more organic approach of exchanging the prints. We knew we would be short of time to get all of the prints to dry flat at the end of our time at Kala, but we didn’t want to rush the making process. It was challenging producing 10 original prints each in such a short time, even though they were not ‘finished prints’. Each one needed to be left the space for the other artists’ response to create the print dialogue.
With each week into the residency at Kala art Institute, we became a part of the community of local and international printmakers working there. I have taken part in various artists’ residencies in the past ten years, and find the one at Kala to be one of the most welcoming environments with the most friendly community of artists I have ever experienced. Printmakers in general, I have always found, to be amongst the most accommodating and selfless of people. Perhaps because of the type of equipment needed to make prints, artists are used to working outside of their studios in shared communal spaces, where being aware of others’ working around you is paramount to a creating a happy, workable space. All of the staff and members of Kala, as well as those attending weekend workshops, were thoughtful and interested in our collaboration. They were all generous with their knowledge of both Kala as well as printmaking studios, galleries and supply stores around the Bay area. I felt so welcomed and comfortable in the community of artists working at the studio. It was unexpected but so wonderful to experience.
As we both began to find a rhythm to the way of working together efficiently in Kala printmaking studio, prints began to emerge. Each of us seemed tentative initially, to make the first move. It was like we were creatively dancing around one another, too nervous or shy to take the lead. Over the course of the first 2 weeks into the collaboration, neither one of us seemed to be confident about what we wanted or were trying to say. Late nights in the studio and long days of what appeared to be progress then ended with feelings of failure grew ever more present. It became obvious that we were trying very hard at attempting to please one another with what we created. Neither of us seemed to be truly reflecting what we intended to in the early prints we made. Perhaps we were so afraid of the collaborative process not working, we were trying too hard to satisfy the aesthetic of the other. We finally managed to acknowledge this, in a bout of frustration over what I felt was another failed print idea I had created.
The tension was immediately released when we discussed what we thought was happening in the collaboration. We decided to establish a more structured framework to work within. New ‘rules’ for the collaboration were this:
Each artist will produce 10 x sets of prints in an edition of 8 over the course of the 4 weeks, inspired by the words and phrases generated in the first week of the residency, using any printmaking medium appropriate.
Then in the final 2 weeks of the residency, each artist will exchange their 10 x sets of prints with the other artist, to allow the other to respond in print. This print dialogue will end with all 20 x sets of prints, with each artists’ response complete. We will then choose 16 sets of prints from the 20 created to form the conversation in print between us.
Since making the framework clear about how we were going to now work, we each breathed a sigh of relief at being able to go on and create 10 sets of prints each freely, as a kind of ‘monologue’, that would eventually be edited down to 8 each on competition of the dialogue. Guillaume got to work silk screen printing cut-outs he’d created and I experimented with water based Japanese ‘suminogashi’ paper marbling techniques.
To begin the collaboration,we took a few tentative steps in the direction of a conversation about colour. We began, in that first week, by choosing a colour palette together. We have both been somewhat limited in our use of colour in our previous work, so in order to make decisions about a new palette, we took a long walk to the local art supply store and discussed the associations we had regarding different colours. The array of ‘speedball’ and ‘jacquard’ screen printing inks available was huge and we settled on a small selection of pinks, florescent reds, golds, coppers and a velvety black. This small step allowed us to start a dialogue together around our conceptual and visual expectations of the collaboration.
After we’d decided on the colours that we would work with collectively, we both began to generate collections of words based around our experiences of America so far. These words and phrases in both English and French became the foundations for images we began to carve, cut out and generate over the following weeks. We experimented with the pigments and palette we’d created, in screen printing, marbling and mokuhanga. As the words lived with us, the imagery they inspired took shape.
The process of collaborating on this printmaking residency made me a little nervous. I have collaborated in the past with other artists on specific projects, but often I had already established a good working relationship with that person and our working styles or methodology had been similar. This time, at Kala, it would be a leap into the unknown. As a sculptor and printmaker, I knew my collaborator’s previous work to be large scale, bold and often monochromatic, which honestly, I found a little intimidating. My current explorations with Japanese water-based printmaking techniques (mokuhanga) have been small-scale and though ambiguous, often reference a narrative. Brisson-Darveau’s works are more concerned with the abstract, although narrative exists within that. We are used to working very differently in terms of scale and production, yet our commitment to completing projects is mirrored in one another. The similarities that each of us are image makers, printmakers, and have a playful approach to our practices, will help to establish connections within the project. Together, I wondered how we would navigate the terrain of this printmaking collaboration, at an unfamiliar studio in a new city to both of us.
