Both Sides is a collaborative project with Kevin Shook, and began as a series of drawings passed back and forth through the mail. As collaborators, we each began a series of four 24x36 drawings using graphite, toner wash and ink on drafting film. The act of using a drawing as a form of communication, as a substitute for a letter or written communication became integral to this process, and carried through the execution of the work. Each time the eight drawings changed hands they were furthered by the opposite collaborator. There was never reduction or deletion of the other’s marks. By altering and adding to each other’s drawings, collaboratively crafting and printing plates and layering imagery through the printing processes of lithography and monotype, we continued to directly make coactive decisions about how and what to add or change about each individual print. We came together in the same studio space during a week in August 2011, where we brought all the components of the work into a finished series of unique prints.

One of the common threads of this work was drawn from our desire to discuss the parallels between the places and environments in which we live and work. Allegany county New York and Birmingham Alabama are not close in proximity, but they have commonalities in economic and social structures of their individual communities. The landscape as a metaphor for community or people group was something we both felt could be used to convey ideas about a universal human condition, without using imagery of the human figure. Our individual studio practices have long been connected by a love of printmaking and interest in history of place and location. We both believe that the landscape shapes the human climate of a community, and that history lives in the landscape, physically and spiritually. The title for the collaboration, Both Sides, refers to both the reciprocal nature of the project, as well as the carrier paper we printed on-mostly translucent handmade Japanese papers.

As collaborators, we were attempting to make something that was unique to both of us as individuals. There exists an inclination to share vocabulary, encourage reciprocity, and challenge our individual aesthetic sense. There is also a wish to find another avenue to extend and augment our relationship and connect in ways that transcend proximity. Making a collaborative endeavor helps to maintain contact as we walk through our individual lives, and creates an avenue to share individual experiences through image making.