Balance project - collaborative art project with the WCA

My latest venture is a collaborative art project I was invited to participate in by the Women's Caucus for Art, Michigan Chapter. The participating artists were partnered with another Michigan artist in a "call and response" technique to create three pieces based on the theme of balance. We each created our first piece, then swapped images. We then created a second piece, based on the theme and inspired by the other artists first piece. Then we swapped our second images, and created a final piece based on the theme and inspired by the other artists' second work which was also inspired by our first work. Get it? Anyway, the final piece I cam up with ended up being a memorial to my grandmother (sort of like my blog, in fact). It is titled "Artifacts and Memories: The Balance of a Life". I used an old empty clock case and collaged it with images of my grandmother, Florence Collar, from toddler to grandmother. I included her death notice, as well as a letter she wrote to me the first week I went to college. This I transferred to a piece of antique fabric that stretched across the clock face. The inside of the clock is lit, so at certain angles you can view an image of me with my grandparents when I was about four. It is the same image at the top of my blog - taken in the breakfast nook where my Gramps taught me how to draw.

Anyway, it ended up being a very personal and cathartic process. My partner, Laurie Clark, and I had fun getting to know each other. Fortunately, she is in Ann Arbor, so we were able to get together a couple of times to talk in person.

The show runs until June 1 at the Duderstadt Gallery on U of M's North Campus. In September the show will move to the Riverside Gallery in Wyandotte, then in October it will go up to Finlandia College in Hancock Michigan, in the Upper Penninsula. The last show will be in Holland Michigan, but I don't have details for that yet.

Here is a link to the info on the show.