Life Next Door contributions
My friend Karine created a Zine series called “Life Next Door” and invited her artist friends to contribute. I participated in three of the five issues with original collages. This happened during the COVID-19 pandemic and these projects were a wonderful way to connect with others in a creative endeavor.
My first contribution was made in the context of pandemic gardening. My thumb is generally a shade closer to brown than green, but I had a little plot in the corner of the back yard popping with kale, corn, peanuts, carrots, and melons. The satisfaction of seeing the growth of food we could eat rose as the plants did.
How did it all taste? You’d have to ask the neighborhood gang of Eastern Gray Squirrels. Those menaces weren’t satisfied with chewing through the trash cans and littering the contents across the yard. It seems all they had ever dreamed of was harvesting unripe produce from a small, urban lot.
This collage is of several different gray images from magazines (largely National Geographic) with hand lettering.
My second contribution was a representation of the art I got in the mail by supporting the artist directly. I recreated the mail: postcards, envelopes, contents from inside. The idea was to evoke the joy and connection that art provides and how its value is beyond the monetary support I participate in. This is part of the inspiration for the Neverending Art Chain.
This final contribution was about the sound of the neighborhood. How does one represent sound visually? I’ve always liked trying to wrap my brain around swapping senses. I know what joy feels like in my chest, but what does it smell like? Here I have a speaker sending soft sounds of backyard patios when no-one is there. The sound of the sky, the grass, the flowers, the fairy lights. It’s the noise they make when we close our eyes, take a deep breath, and know we are welcome.