VAP 2023-Q4
Featuring works by the artist groups participating in the collaborative project Ferality in Nameless Realms: Adina Andrus and Chico Sierra; Sibley Barlow and Heidi Schultz; Summer Brooks and Allison Panzironi; Tiana Nanayo Kuʻuleialoha Honda and Sarah Valeri; Ruth Jeyaveeran and Kirsten Taylor; Elena Kalkova and Elinore Noyes; Hannah Lindo, Brittany Norgia and Natalie Jauregui-Ortiz; Emily Teall, Robert Zurer, and Tristan Lindo; Garry Noland, and Miyuki Tsushima; Patricia Miranda and Mary Clara Hutchinson.
Patricia Miranda + Mary Clara Hutchinson
Allison Panzironi + Summer Brooks
Adina Andrus + Chico Sierra
Ruth Jeyaveeran + Kirsten Taylor
Hannah Lindo + Natalie Jauregui-Ortiz + Brittany Noriega
“This was an interesting project. I haven’t done any sort of “blind” collaboration before, and it was a challenge. Somehow constraining and freeing at the same time.” – B.N
“When I was invited to participate in this collaboration project, I thought of how wonderful it would be to connect with artists in another state, and interesting this would be. Once it was a go, we had our kickoff meeting and I soon met my partners. We all described our works and what we each explore and work on – and there was a clear thread between all of our works. I could tell that we all felt excited to be partnered together, as we all explore similar themes and imagery in our own practices. Once my partner passed the painting to me, I thought of how incredibly gorgeous it was. The colors were rich, dark blues with brushy paint strokes laye red on top of each other. It was a painting of an abstracted scenic forest, in prussian and ultramarine blues, with an orb of light painted with layered yellows and whites. We made sure to work with non-oil material, so that the painting would have a sufficient amount of time to dry. Once I began working, I realized how incredibly challenging this was. How was I to carry on this project and paint over such a fantastic painting? Usually painting in oil, I used acrylic with my memory of a material I had used several years before. I realized the paint was too dark to properly layer the way that I do in my own oil practice, and I began to remove paint. I labored back and forth between adding trees, colors, marks – to removing color with water and paper towels. This repeated until I finally had to call it quits so I could go home – unsure of how well I actually delivered on my collaboration.
A few days later, and from the luck of some higher source, I had the pleasure of having KC Reed over to look at my space. I told them that the collaboration painting was in my studio – just as they were visiting. They looked at the painting and said “I would ship this as is”. Unsure if I believed it at first, I ultimately came to see the beauty in the work I contributed, and shipped it to the third person in our rotation – reminding myself to once again trust in the process of painting and art-making.” – N.O
Garry Noland + Miyuki Tsushima
“I appreciate this opportunity that enabled me to talk and connect with other artists in KC. It was really inspiring from the beginning, and thanks to the wonderful curators, the pairing was perfect for me. Working with Garry was a wonderful experience. I truly hope ICS/KC exchange would continue in future.” – M.T
“I was grateful to receive Tsushima’s work and materials. Tsushima’s openness and minimal intervention was generous as it allowed me to work freely in the space with few confines.” – G.N
Elena Kalkova + Elinore Noyes
“It was greatly inspiring for me to connect to Elinore, we found out we both share an interest in interrogating imposed power structures and systems, but approach it differently. Our conversations reminded me how important it is for artists to have community and how productive and enriching it can be for the practice.” – E.K
“Working with Elena to create two collaborative pieces was inspiring. When we met and talked for the first time, I was surprised to find out how much we shared in terms of conceptual interests across our creative practices. Driven by a love of things left behind, we both use research and collection-based methods to investigate history first-hand.
The process of creating a piece for her to finish was an interesting challenge. It was a conversation left open, the frame of a question rather than the answer that a finished artwork provides. We both chose to pull material from our environment for the pieces we started and then applied a manual craft process for the second step. I think this speaks to the tension between mass, industrial society and individual, human experience that is present in both of our work. I really enjoyed the opportunity to work collaboratively with Elena to explore new materials and ideas.” – E.N
Sibley Barlow + Heidi Schultz
“Collaborating with Heidi was an enriching experience that gave me a chance to explore my practice in a new way. There is a playfulness to Heidi’s work that mine does not have, and it is my hope I can carry some of this into the studio going forward. It was interesting to dig into where our work intersects as far as content and subject matter goes. We work in different mediums, in very different styles, and this turned out to be a fantastic challenge that opened new doors.” S.B
“Working on the collaboration piece really pushed me to work harder. It gave the chance to use different forms and do unexpected things which was great. Figuring out how my ideas would fit in the collaboration was a fun thought exercise.” – H.S
Emily Teall + Robert Zurer + Tristan Lindo
“When Robert, Emily, and I met and discussed our work, we highlighted how we are each visually creating work that reflects our perspective on life. After gaining enthusiasm from our meeting I was thinking about a system that was made of spirals and how this system appeared to have some kind of organization but it actually is out of control and organic- just as our lives are. When responding to Robert’s piece, I was obsessed with the rolling hills that were depicted at the bottom of the composition and after staring at the shapes Robert made, I could not stop seeing a mythical bird-like creature interacting with the landscape. When responding to the piece Emily started, I wanted to keep the same exploration I had with Robert’s piece in Emily’s, so I did not hold back on what I envisioned in the work.” – T.L
Sarah Valeri + Tiana Nanayo Ku’uleialoha
“Tiana’s work is incredibly delicate in touch, in a way that states a gentle and assured intention. I like this, because it is a form of power that is not emulated enough in the current cultural maelstrom.
We discussed our relationships to the nature of places and elements, as well as specific places that have left impressions on us. Tiana moves between Hawaii and Kansas and I, growing up in a military family, carry along many memories and sensations of places that I know may or may not realistically connect to those places anymore. The idea of the evolution of memories and what truths or dreams they hold or lose is something I think of often while painting.
When we first discussed our collaboration Tiana was visiting Hawaii and I was about to visit New Mexico. I’ve often painted the desert as I credit the Sonoran with my beginnings as an artist (I would like to encourage everyone to look up the Sky Island Alliance as they are protecting the Sonoran right now and they provide a great education on this ecology.) I knew the desert in New Mexico would be different. And it was. But I don’t know if the places I walked in the Sonoran are the same either at this point. I had decided I would sketch some forms there to begin the work I would send to Tiana.
I did. I sketched a few shapes, and I particularly liked an antler form I found. I drew it in mirror image with its supposedly missing partner. It was a good simple quick drawing. I really liked it and thought I might send it along to Tiana as a gift. Unfortunately, when I arrived home to New York the sketch was destroyed, crumpled in my bag after a long night of airport delays. But the top half of the drawing kept surfacing in piles or books. So, after beginning many drawings and paintings for my response to our collaboration I sat down to draw as many antlers as I could from memory, all of them changing drastically along the way. “Two Lost Antlers” is a small collection of those drawings. They are in color pencil and made in rather quick succession. Likely they will be seeds for future things.” – S.V
“The collaboration process was quite an interesting journey to navigate. As a printmaker, I find that drawing is the central core to my practice. And after meeting with Sarah and discussing how we would both contribute to this project, we found the idea of ‘transitional spaces’ to be a topic that meshed well with our work and travel plans during the summer.
When I received Sarah’s woodcut matrices, it was both familiar and unfamiliar for me to work with. I’m used to inking up matrices to create impressions but with Sarah’s work, she often creates rubbings with graphite rather than using ink. I decided to embrace the more abstract method of creating the impression I made from Sarah’s blocks. I tend to work more representatively rather than abstractly so it was quite difficult for me to be looser and less constricting on myself. In the end, I feel that it was interesting to work from a different perspective and approach to drawing/printmaking. I didn’t use all the blocks that were sent to me and only rubbed certain portions, not the entire image on each carved block, and through this piece is the one that we’re showcasing, the other tentative impressions that I created that led into this piece definitely brought forth an interest in the potential to experiment and explore more with this approach to image making.” – T.N.K