Held in Common: Purple
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.
Purple was the final color. In the yellow series I used full sheets of paper and added layers of cloth and paper on top, and the stories unfolded across several panels. I didn't find the paper particularly enjoyable to stitch on, but I was intrigued by the direct, obvious use of language. For purple, I pulled that storytelling onto a single panel.
I began thinking about this series in October 2020. A lot had happened since we began the project. In the midst of the social, medical, and political upheaval of the summer of 2020, I decided to talk less and listen more, without responding. I needed quiet. I needed time to understand, and think, and learn, and the physical separation of the pandemic eased that process.
I went back to the gessoed pages from my grandfather's copy of The Story of the Irish Race (see the red series) and found it remarkable how many of the words describing the early days of Ireland felt true of today. It gave me hope that one day we will look at all of this with the wisdom that comes only with experience, time, and patience.
I pieced and overdyed scraps of industrial waste fabric, then appliquéd found words and phrases onto the panels and embellished them with stitching. The words come from different pages, and on each panel I pieced them together into a small story. One reads: “and then there were the women,” “the women had mirrors,” “and readily found reasons for refusal and delay.” Each stitched piece is laminated to 3/4” baltic birch plywood. Click on the images below for a close-up view and detailed description.
