collaborations

Working in collaboration with other artists is a not only source of inspiration for me, it also encourages broader thinking and forces me to adopt new approaches to solving problems. Since early 2015, I have been involved in collaborative work with other artists, some in Australia, some in the US. For this collaboration, we are working in small books, the initial four books were ones I found, and the next four have been made by the four artists involved. We pass the books to one another to add our contribution, each artist having chosen a theme for their own book. We each do a complete double page spread, and add to the first and last pages. In the four handmade books there is also a combined double page spread. This has been inspiring and given me more pleasure than I could have imagined. I will add galleries of the books as they are completed.

Below is one of the ready made books. The theme is the ocean, and the other two artists are Cathe (Amaryllis Log) and Chris (Christopher Beeson Encaustic).

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The book below also has an ocean theme, started with a drawing of seaweed. This is also in a ready-made book, but done in collaboration with Karen Bailey
(karenbaileystudio.com) and Kylie Fogarty (kyliefogarty.com)

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The images below are from the next collaboration, with Cathe Jacobi (Amaryllis Log), Gale Everett (Sticks, Stones and Paperstew) and Karen Bailey (Karen Bailey Studio). We each made a book and chose a theme. The first page we all contributed to, then each artist filled a double page spread, the final spread was from all of us, then the last page was for summing up. This is my book, called ‘The Circle of Life’.

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‘Water’ – Gale Everett’s book

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‘Collections’ Cathe Jacobi’s book

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‘Patterns in Nature – the Forest’ Karen Bailey’s book.

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9 thoughts

    1. Actually I started this project. It began when I found some small 8 page sketchbooks and after I had completed a drawing on one page I did a post suggesting it could be fun to collaborate, sending the book from one person to the next. Four artists took me up on it, two here in Australia and two in the US, then we started another set where each of four artists made a book, chose a theme then we passed them around. All of these have taken a long time, but we are drawing close to the finish line, then will think about doing more.

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      1. Are all the collabrations done by professional designers?
        All the contributors show such amazing talent and creativity.
        Im mostly self taught and its overwhelming seeing professional work collabrations.

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        1. We are a mix of professional artists and amateurs – my life is divided between art and work as a graphics designer, but the balance is now going more towards the art, and most of the others are in a similar position, so we are not self-supporting artists, but amateurs with a professional attitude! Its all about just doing it, keep working and accept failures with the successes in growing as an artist. Good luck!

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  3. These are so beautiful, Anna. What a marvellous collaboration. What will happen to the sketchbooks at the end of the process? I am involved in a similar one, but it is only one sketchbook, and there is a dilemma about what happens at the end.

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    1. Thank you so much Anne – we were all really happy how they turned out in the end! We each kept the one that we started (this is the four hand-made books), and with the ready-made ones that were shown at the beginning of the post, I have two and two of the others are with artists who were involved with them. We all blogged about the four hand-made ones, so we could each see the progress. I can see it would be a dilemma as to who keeps a single one. One of our group suggested we got the books scanned and printed so we could each have a copy, but it proved to be prohibitively expensive, but there may be other cheaper options. Good luck in working it out!

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