Held in Common: Red
In 2019, four members of the Hana Kark Collective — encaustic artist Caryl St. Ama, painter Margaret Lazzari, mixed-media artist Nancy Kay Turner, and Carlyn Clark — began a collaborative project using color as a commonality. It became known as Chromatic Collaboration. Working independently, each artist created 25 6” x 6” birch plywood panels for every primary and secondary color. Starting with blue, they worked their way through the spectrum, with no clear idea of where the process might lead. Their first exhibitions, mid-process, took place in September 2019.
Red was the fourth color in the series. Continuing an exploration of telling stories through found objects, the artist drew inspiration from her grandfather’s copy of The Story of the Irish Race. As part of her commitment to buy no new art supplies, Clark repurposed old books as sketchbooks.
Reflecting on her grandfather’s pride in his Irish heritage—and the distance created by geography, culture, and assimilation—Clark gessoed the pages to isolate evocative phrases that suggested a deep emotional connection to place and memory. Phrases like “impelling motives,” “held spellbound,” “continually wandering,” and “one interrupted dream of peace” were left visible beneath layers of paint and machine stitching.
Each piece is mounted with copper tacks onto a 3/4” Baltic birch plywood panel painted with a copper wash, designed to evolve as the metal naturally oxidizes over time.
