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.
