User:Charlotte Berwind/Iterations An Art Experiment

iterations

iterations is a project, process, and body of art produced through a mail-based exchange over a six-month period. Each painting was created collaboratively by the six members of the project group: Charlotte Berwind, Christopher Staples, Claudine Mussuto, Georgine Honohan, Joann Zwolski, and Laura Paradiso. Any single artist in the group knew the work of fewer than half of the other artists when the project started. We met in June 2014 to plan iterations, with an expressed intention to exhibit the project.

We established a single criterion for the artwork and our creative process: each initiated piece would measure 10” x 10”. From July through November 2014, thirty works circulated among us in an alphabetical round-robin sequence based on first names. Each artist maintained a process journal and later created a solo piece in response to the collaboration. Members were free to communicate with one another throughout the project, which we did according to our individual needs, interests, and personalities. Midway through the process we established somewhat more formal critique partners.

From the commencement of the project, we each and always had five pieces with which to work. We placed no restrictions on how to respond to or work with the pieces we received. We could make the work larger, smaller, or differently shaped, and could use any medium(s) or mark-making techniques. We could cover or highlight or leave alone any mark-making that had been previously made. We designed a method of identifying, signing, and dating the works so we could track the progress of each piece over time, and scanned or photographed each piece at every stage to establish a visual record of its evolution.

Following our June planning meeting, each artist initiated five 10”x10” works using materials of her own choice. We all chose paper. On July 15th, every artist sent one initiated piece to each of the other group members. On August 15th, and each subsequent 15th of the month through November, after having contributed our own marks to the works in our possession, we each mailed two envelopes: one with four pieces to the person directly following us in alphabetical sequence, and one with the single piece initiated by that person to the artist in alphabetical sequence following her. In this way, we were never the recipient of any of the pieces we initiated, and each of the 30 iterations works was created by the entire group of artists, except that Charlotte passed on her contributions to iterations 5 and 6.

In January 2015, we met to select by an anonymous voting process the pieces that would be shown in the four scheduled exhibitions. At the conclusion of the voting, fourteen paintings had been selected.

iterations was an experiment that in its form, content, process, and outcome mimicked life amidst human diversity. We were each differently affected by and responsive to the marks made by other members of the group. We were at ease and familiar with some; curious but challenged by others; perplexed and irked by still others. The arc of reactions to the project was characteristic of new relationships: it began with excitement, moved to challenged interest, and regularly found its denouement in discontentment. Fortunately, iterations was grounded in the mysterious grace of art process that ensured a meaningful project outcome.