As our collaboration unit had now gotten fully underway, I started considering some potential collaborative partners to suggest for myself to work with. Choosing an appropriate complementing artist was of great importance to me, as I wanted someone who could not only empathise with my key concerns, but also interested in different enough ideas to push my own practice in new areas. Because of this I specifically avoided approaching artists who dealt with themes of animals and the environment, as I already feel like these themes are already strongly represented in my work and didn't necessarily need the collaborative 'voice' to strengthen it. Instead I wanted to find someone who could help me consider different ways of working and different artistic practices and ways of expressing my work.
I began to discuss with Beth Bartlett (a 3rd year sharing my studio spaces) about a few initial ideas for collaborations. The one thing I think I had not explored to the maximum of it's potential in the previous project was my tissue paper experimentations. These had been a fertile ground for development as it was quite an innovative way of creating street artworks, and was not something I had seen done by other street artists previously. They also matched beautifully with my environmental concerns as a way of a achieving a 'colour stencil' effect without actually needed any of the environmentally questionable cans of solvent high powered acrylic particle spray paint! When shapes overlap on Beth's work, she mixes the colours in the overlapping areas to give the illusion of blending or transparency. When using tissue paper, the layers between shapes in this way literally can seen overlapping, so this method would also allow her to explore this element of the colour mixing in a very tangible, literal way.
Beth's works used the iconography of shapes and geometry to express other concepts of opposites and definition, such as feminine and masculine, large and small, growth and progression. She has also explored fibonacci sequences, the golden ratio and other formulaic applications and patterns from the world around us. These focuses on natural geometry are one of the key areas which I think could interestingly link our practice, as it is something I have studied within my own research. One of the other important things I picked up from talking to her about her practice, was her use of these shapes and constructions as a proxy to explore something which is otherwise unrelated. This is something which animals have been used to do consistently throughout human development, and has often cropped up in the research about animals and representation which I have studied. Because of this I think her style of investigation and creation could match very well with animal subjects and themes. We got together and planned to have an evening session in our studios where we could discuss and explore some potential ideas and ways of working together, and maybe get started on some experimental maquettes.
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