2x2 Sketchbook Week 2

2x2: 2 Artists, 2 Sketchbooks, a collaboration between artists Dana Barbieri and Anne Butera. Dana and Anne met in an online painting class. Although they have never met in person, they have become friends through regular visits to each others' blogs. It was through this connection that this project began. Wanting to move from friendship to collaboration, each spent two months filling one half of a sketchbook before mailing it off to the other. Dana worked on the lefthand pages and Anne on the right. Each will be responding to the other's work on the adjacent sketchbook pages over the coming year. Watch weekly as they reveal another page of their story.

"One cat just leads to another."
                              --Ernest Hemingway

Dana (l), Anne (r)

I had a few ideas of where to take this page before I started and then after seeing Dana's response from Week 1, I was inspired to respond in collage. Dana sent me some lovely papers and I used some of them combined with a piece I already had on hand to create a little Siamese as a friend for Dana's sketched cat.

At this point in our project I've tried many different things, experimented on my own, "finished" a whole sketchbook (ok, half of a sketchbook). That other sketchbook ended up taking on a certain flavor. I used certain techniques, certain media. I worked with certain imagery and themes. Now, beginning to work in this book with its own flavor, I'm coming at it in such a different way.

I'm intrigued by the idea that as we progress in these two sketchbooks the flavors will begin to change. The imagery and media, the themes and techniques will merge or meld. New imagery and themes and media and techniques will be added. There may be subtle shifts or bold changes. That is the nature of collaboration. We end up with something that neither of us could have created on our own.

Be sure to visit Dana's blog for her take on this week's collaboration.



About the artists:

Dana is an artist and crafter living in the foothills of the Catskill mountains two hours north of New York City with her husband, two children and little kitty. She is passionate about painting, knitting, crochet, color, pattern and design.

Anne is an artist, writer and crafter who finds inspiration and joy in the beauty of her garden and the magic of nature. Dissatisfied with and disheartened by the pace and lifestyle of the city, she and her husband (with their two rescued greyhounds and an aging Siamese) relocated to a small town in the beautiful Driftless region in southwest Wisconsin with the goal of living a slower, simpler, more intentional life.