This ongoing creative collaboration with Mary Ann O’Donnell,  Shenzhen-based ethnographic  anthropologist and blogger (Shenzhen Noted/WordPress) is like a visual manifestation of contact improvisation.  Over several years we have been exchanging scrolls of rice paper, and Mary Ann’s practice calligraphy sheets. We mail them back and forth between our respective homes in China and Israel, or, when we are traveling, from where ever we might be.  Each new arrival of a scroll brings some unanticipated image or unfamiliar cultural reference, some intrusion of Chinese or Hebrew, the “foreign” language beyond our shared English. The serendipity of how relevant the other person’s contribution appears, despite the differences of our languages and cultural contexts, is of course, the cherished, surprise “coming together.” After 6 years of long distance collaboration, in February of 2016, Mary Ann came to work with me in my studio, bringing new aspects of cooperation and sharing to the intimacy of our creative practice. Some new works were created and work on some supposedly “finished” images was resumed.

First shared work

Rice paper, ink, gouache, thread, waxed paper, 14″ X 20″ 2010

Injured Symptom

Mixed media collage. thread, waxed paper 18″ X 12″ 2010

Injured Symptom revisited (detail) 2016

Scroll in progress (To Enter detail)

Rice paper, mixed media collage, paint/ink 2011

Scroll in progress (detail)

Rice paper, mixed media collage, paint/ink

Scroll in progress (NJ Girls Travel the World detail)

Rice paper, mixed media collage, paint/ink, 2012

Scroll in progress (detail)

Rice paper, mixed media collage, paint/ink, oil crayon, 2012

Scroll in progress (detail)

Rice paper, mixed media collage, paint/ink, thread, oil crayon, 2012

Scroll in progress (detail)

In my studio

During International Artist Residency at the 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, CA  2010

Scroll in progress in Mary Ann’s studio in Shenzhen, China

Nude with Fruit

Rice paper, ink, collage, thread 28″ X 18, 2013

Nude with Fruit (detail)

Nude with Fruit  (detail)

 Without Boundary (earlier version)

Rice paper, ink, collage, acrylic paint, thread 28″ X 18″, 2013

Without Boundary (detail)

Without Boundary, further progress (detail) 2016

Berkeley to China Thing

Rice paper, collage, ink acrylic paint, oil crayon, beads. thread, 16″ X 12″, 2012

Shadows/Pocket

 Rice paper, India ink on paper, linen shirting, thread, beads; 29″ X 17″; 2014

Shadows/Pocket  detail

 

Paper Dolls

 Rice paper, ink, collage, acrylic paint, thread; 29″ X 17″; 2014

Paper Dolls (detail 1)

 

Paper Dolls (detail 2)

 

 Paper Dolls (detail 3)

Electric Chair in progress

Rice paper, ink, collage, acrylic paint, thread; 29″ X 17″ 2016

Electric Chair in progress (detail)

House Within in progress

Rice paper, ink, collage, oil crayon, acrylic paint, thread; 17″ X 29″ 2016

References to Birds

Rice paper, vellum, collage, ink, acrylic paint, 29″ X 24″  2016

References to Birds (detail)

To Join in a Great Experience

 Rice paper, ink, acrylic paint, collage  18″ X 12″  2016

Original Lift Plow Blade sign, 2010

Mary Ann and I met while we were both “fellows” at the CrossCurrents / Auburn Research Colloquium in New York City in 2010. This sign, in front of the building on upper Broadway, during a record July heat-wave, suggests the perfect syntax to identify our non-rational creative process that depends so much on re purposing and random chance for it’s logic. 

Mary Ann in Jerusalem, 2016

Upcoming plans to work together in China, later in the year, will be announced. If you are intrigued by this work, and wish to acquire any of the images, they can be ordered as superb glicée prints on a variety of fine papers. Write to brightideabooksonline@gmail.com for details.