Tuesday, July 4, 2006

Commonalities

So, Chris, finally we’re Two Artists blogging! July 4 is as good a time as any to begin. When else can we get fireworks to accompany the launch?

I’m thinking about two issues that interest me.

. The first is the idea of collaboration. You are about to begin a drawing project with an East Coast artist. I collaborated with a painter about a decade ago. Mine was a summer project that resulted in a small body of work, twelve 12x12" paintings. While it was great fun, a welcome change from the isolation of the studio, the project opened up my own work in unexpected ways. I’ll tell you more about mine, if you tell me more about yours.


. The second is our own individual work. Specifically, I’m thinking about our recent shows—your HTML drawings at the 1708 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, and my paintings in encaustic at the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta—because our work shares a geometric sensibility and, despite our extremely different mediums, a similar kind of luminosity.

365, 2006, 365 inkjet prints of HTML drawings, 11 x 8.5 inches each, installed at 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA, May 2006. Photo Pete Baldes, 2006

Installation from Silk Road, each painting 12x12 inches and (Uttar
292), 48 x 67 inches, at rear, installed at the Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, Aprl-May, 2006

(For anyone looking in, we’re Chris Ashley from Oakland, California, and Joanne Mattera from New York City. We met in October 2005 at a gallery in Philadelphia where Chris was showing five small paintings, just a few days after Chris had seen nine of my small paintings in a San Francisco gallery. We chatted briefly, and after following up with some "nice to meet you" e-mails found we shared some points of view and began a more regular e-mail conversation. That led to JM’s idea to do a joint blog and CA’s idea to call it Two Artists Talking.)


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