Husband/Wife Collaboration

After 23 years of marriage, Syed and I have finally collaborated on four artworks!  Amazing!  Not that we've actually been negotiating all these years...just that we finally got it together and figured out how to make two very divergent styles work.  And we did it without arguing...at least he did it without arguing... I, of course, had to argue a little.

So, this is how it went.  After a couple of years of trying to figure out how to actually mix our media (glass, metal, gourds, painting), we moved on.  Mixing all those things just seemed ridiculously forced and a little silly.  Next, we spoke about gathering mixed materials for the re-purpose style and mixing that with glass.  Appealing at a casual glance, but it just didn't come together.  Next we tried on the idea of me painting the glass.  Not.  How bout working bits of glass into paintings?  Really?  And we moved on.

This year, inspired by a young woman doing stencil work in Salisbury, we were able to see how my drawing and Syed's abstract glass and metal could come together.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  We could easily see how to develop it after these first four were finished.  I won't talk about those developments, just to say that a door has opened and we can see the highway before us....it's going to be a great fun trip, and you will be seeing more of us in the future!  Till then, come in and see these pieces - jump off into an adventure with us - we've got some great ideas for larger pieces as installations.

     

Wildflower Series

Ranuncula Series

Collaboration of the Celebration Kind

Here's a little tale of a happy combination at the Celebration of Fine Art - I started working on a little gourd with a new technique of layering 10-15 glazes for a dimensional effect in a floral design with a little yellow bird included.  As I worked I was thinking of how to finish the raw gourd top...the design seemed so elegant that the raw edge clearly wasn't right.  I had found an interesting old Victorian brass back plate for a door knocker while I was in San Diego over Christmas.  Just the right size and fit!  But, what to do about the hole...now that seemed unfinished.  You know, these "simple little projects" sometimes get away from you!  So, I wandered down to see what my friends Donna Armstrong and Donna Bernstein thought.  We all mulled it over.  Came up with some great ideas, but the best was to ask Kevin Powers if he would blow a small stopper for it...and so, back to the other end of the tent, where Kevin was working away on his glass.  Gracious guy that he is, he said, sure, let's do it...and after the show closed last night, he blew the sweetest little stopper with a delicate yellow flower in the center, just the exact colors of the work I had done.  And here is the  glass blowing process and the finished piece!  Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!