Held in Common: Blue

In 2019, four members of the Hana Kark Collective — encaustic artist Caryl St. Ama, painter Margaret Lazzari, mixed-media artist Nancy Kay Turner, and I — began a collaborative project using color as a commonality. It became known as Chromatic Collaboration. We each worked independently to create 25 birch plywood panels, 6” x 6” each, for every primary and secondary color. We started with blue, intending to work our way through the spectrum, with no clear idea of how we would ultimately assemble the work or where the process might lead. Our first exhibitions, mid-process, were in September 2019.

Blue was where we began, and for me blue meant indigo. My first round, made before I had seen anyone else's work, was a single piece of 25 panels that had to hang together: Writ in Water. Once I saw what the others were making, I realized it didn't work in this context, so I changed course and made pieces that could each stand on their own.

"Writ in Water, my first round of blue: 25 panels hung as one work. Click on the image to read more

From the start, I resolved not to buy any new art materials, to create less waste, and to trust that the stash of fabrics, dyes, paints, and supplies I'd gathered and inherited over the years would see me through. Each panel starts with scraps of my own indigo-dyed cloth. On top I layered industrial waste fabrics and offcuts from interior fabric headers, stitched together by hand and machine, then embellished with block printing and indigo-dyed threads. The sea glass was collected over many years while scavenging with my children at our family cottage on Keats Island, British Columbia, often with my parents along: bottles that were once churned through the sea, now stitched into place. Each stitched piece is laminated to 3/4” baltic birch plywood. Click on the images below for a close-up view and detailed description.