Held In Common

Held in Common is my part of Chroma: A Chromatic Collaboration, a 2019 project by four members of the Hana Kark Collective: encaustic artist Caryl St. Ama, painter Margaret Lazzari, mixed-media artist Nancy Kay Turner, and me. Using color as a commonality, we each worked independently to create 25 birch plywood panels, 6” x 6” each, for every primary and secondary color.

Color gave the four of us a common thread, and I held to it. When my first piece, Writ in Water, didn't fit, I changed course and let the work follow memory: sea glass gathered at our family cottage, a book that belonged to my grandfather, and the words I found in it. Each series grew out of the one before, so the six colors read as one story unfolding.

• Blue: indigo, and a first piece that didn't fit

• Orange: learning new stitches

• Green: a box of sea glass and the summers it holds

• Red: my grandfather's book, gessoed to leave only some words

• Yellow: small tales that run across panels

• Purple: 2020, and the words gathered into stories, one to a panel

For the collaboration itself, including the hanging and the exhibitions, see Chromatic Collaboration.