Collaboration with Valley Haggard for Randolph Macon Show

I'm feeling very excited about another show I have coming up in February 2011.  At Randolph Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, there's going to be a show about collaboration.  Four pairs of artists are going to collaborate to create artwork together. 

Amie Oliver and Harry Kollatz from Richmond are going to work together.  Amie paints beautiful pictures of what look like glazes on birch plywood with drawings overtop, very atmospheric and graceful.  Harry is a writer for Richmond Magazine and other publications around town.  He also has written a couple of books about Richmond.  They're married to each other, so I'm curious to see what that collaboration will be like!  I think the curator said they've collaborated in the past as well.

Architect Roberto Ventura and poet Josh Poteet were the winners of InLight Richmond this past year, creating a sublimely beautiful installation about slavery and freedom called "for gabriel".  They will be collaborating again for the space at Randolph Macon. 

The third "pair" will actually be just one person - Dash Shaw - who is a cartoonist/graphic novelist who lives and works in NYC but is from Richmond.  Since he does the words and pictures himself, he's doing both parts.

The fourth pair is Valley Haggard and me.  Valley is a freelance writer working here in Richmond.  She's working on an especially interesting series of essays for Belle Magazine about different healing modalities she's tried out and the effects they've had on her.  I photographed Valley about a month ago, and she's writing about the experience of modelling, the feelings it has brought up, thoughts she's had about it, etc. I'll be painting several pictures of her over the course of the next year for inclusion in the show.  We're meeting every so often to talk about the process.  This morning I spent several hours picking out pictures I'd like to paint.  I woke up this morning and couldn't get them out of my head, so I figured that was the next right thing to do!  I'm very excited to get going on this project. 

I'll let you know more about the show as it evolves.  I think it'll be very interesting.  I'm excited about my collaboration with Valley and am loving seeing how much talking with her and working with her is adding to the whole process.  It's awesome!  And I'm interested to find out how other people collaborate and what sort of work they come up with.  It's a very interesting process.

And now.... into the studio with me!  I've procrastinated enough for one day!