Since last December fellow artist Karen Stamper and I have been engaged in a collaboration and I thought it was about time I wrote a blog about it. As I’m sure you are aware we go back a while. I’m not sure when it began but we both taught in Cambridgeshire and our paths would often cross. Despite the rigours of teaching we both hung on to our own identity as artists, exhibited locally and took part in Open Studios. Our respective choice of media enabled us to do that, Karen was working mostly in collage and myself printmaking, enabling us short bursts of intense work before the next class arrives!

The nature of the pandemic has meant we seem to bump into each other more than ever, albeit online. When I started online teaching it was Karen who I turned to for help and advice, for which I am very grateful. She had been running her self-paced sketchbook courses for a while. When she launched her fabulous Free Up Your Sketchbook and Grow course she interviewed me as one of her guest artists.

The collaboration spontaneously happened one day back in December 2021. Karen had been posting images of her constructions from found objects, and I had recently finished my MA for which the main focus was collecting and arranging discarded objects as a way of elevating their status. This led to a printmaking project exploring the liminal space; the threshold, by using discarded boxes as printing plates. Looking back, the connections were clear and it was inevitable that I would comment on one of her posts.

And so it began. Since then, the parcel has been to and from Cambridge to Norwich over 12 times, sometimes there has been a large gap when one or the other of us has been away, other times it was a quick turn around. The only ‘rule’ was it had to fit in the A3 envelope. The envelope has taken on its own identity and following…..my postman is aware of its contents and gets very excited when it arrives back in Norwich!

I found myself mainly printmaking, enjoying the format of the pieces Karen was sending. These prints enabled us to keep ‘feeding’ the project with papers that related to a previous existence, linking the work regardless of what we did to the prints or who did it. The prints were from the card constructions and over time became new card constructions themselves, often they were used as plates and so it went on. Karen added collage and paint, cut things up and reassembled. This cyclical nature of the work was both exciting and regenerative…

At one point I cut up two of the prints and made a concertina book as an homage to Karen’s now infamous process.

From that point on we were exploring, playing, and challenging. Using media and processes that were both familiar and new. Engaging a growing number of fans on Instagram eagerly awaiting the next instalment. At times it would be as simple as a few brushstrokes, collage or cutting out shapes, at others it would be more complex, depending on our response and how much time we had available. Some parts of my journey I filmed, others were photographed. Pieces changed beyond recognition but that was fine, we were not aiming for final outcomes, but for the experience. This is from round 4.

Challenging each other has been an absolute joy. One highlight was when I decided the concertina needed some radical alteration, it had become sticky with layers of acrylic so I sanded it down and dipped it in a tray of black ink. Where the paper was revealed it soaked up the ink, the remaining acrylic rejected it. The gauntlet was down and when I got it back it had been rightfully chopped up!

This is part of the package I am sending back this week. I printed these on my new favourite press, a Cuttlebug I got for £30 on eBay (there’s a video on Instagram of me using it).

I have gotten a lot out of this collaboration, and have certainly pushed myself out of my comfort zone, exploring new ways of working, media and processes in the knowledge that it’s not precious. Anything I send will be cut up and reconfigured by Karen, anything she sends it likely to be forced through my press. I had to devise ways of printing that could dry for her to use as potential collage material. Monotype printing with acrylics was an obvious choice but by trial and error I managed to devise a way of printing intaglio with acrylics. That alone has enabled my own work to move into previously impossible directions.

The content and the subject matter has also evolved alongside the collaboration. Karen has developed her explorations into her Salvage Series where and I have been exploring printmaking from vintage book covers and Cuban cigar boxes.

The nature of our processes has meant the project self generates. If this had been a sketchbook project, we would have come to the last page long ago! Whilst we are both adding and taking away there is always something new to post back.

Questions of ‘ownership’ arise, whose ‘art’ is it? Does that even matter? It is almost a form of graffiti when the artist is aware that someone else will come along and cover over.

We have no idea when it will end… but here’s a few more photos…