The Rest of the Word (ROW) student group began a collaboration project in January. The structure is:

• Everyone signs up by mid January, and we are put in an alphabetic (by first name) list.
• Everyone supplies a photograph or other piece of work, to prime the process.
  • This must be something created or photographed within 100 meters of the artist’s home with a general prompt of ‘place’
• Each round
  • One individual will supply a prompt word.
  • Each artist will receive an image another person in the group
  • Each artist will take these two items as input to create something new
  • This new object is passed to the next individual in the list.
• Each round lasts one month, corresponding to the time between ROW zoom calls
• Part of the zoom call will be used to discuss each person’s contribution, or the collaboration as a whole.

There are currently nine students participating, so this will take a little under a year to complete.

Table of Contents:

• 2023 (March, April, May)

Initial Photo Contribution: Feb 2023

Round 1: March 2023

Response

Process

• I didn’t want to print the image and manipulate it. I wanted to redraw or reinterpret it myself, in some form.
• The word ‘prick’, putting aside pejoratives, put me in mind of sewing and the embroidery work I did in Drawing Skills last year.
• I was listening to a podcast talking about artists departing the picture plane. This put me in mind of some form of physical construct.
• I wanted enough variety in the image that the next contributor could pull pieces from it and not feel too hemmed in.

In all, it came together quite quickly. The slowest part, naturally, was the fiber work as care must be taken not to tear the paper. The green fiber was chosen to match the collar of the black dog in the image — I wanted a nod to the pets being there, even if I didn’t want them fully represented.

I’m very curious what the next person in line will do with this.

Sketchbook

I’m being very conscious to work ideas out in my sketchbook instead of just noodling them around in my head.

Round 2: April 2023

For round 2, I received the round 1 work from another artist, a new prompt word.

Response

Process

During the session where we went through Round 1, and I learned the prompt image I was to receive, I immediately thought of flipping the image upside down turning the cactus into a comet, and the sky into sea. I had my watercolour pencils beside me, so as we talked on the call, I sketched out an initial idea.

Sketchbook

Round 3: May 2023

Response

The petals in the photograph looked, to me, like Flamenco dancers, and the twisting folds of their dresses.

Pastel might not be the right medium for this, or at least, perhaps I should have worked larger?

Round 4: June 2023

I decided to put in some practice with Procreate on my IPad. Here, the image became a design for a child’s bedroom.