I am very excited to share the lat­est install­ment of Art Together, a col­lab­o­ra­tive inter­view. It works like this: I cre­ate a piece of work and then mail it to the par­tic­i­pat­ing artist. They, in turn, respond to it some how– this could be: adding, sub­tract­ing, cut­ting, past­ing, paint­ing. What­ever they see fit to what I’ve started. After that, I write some ques­tions based on our collaboration.

Mia Christo­pher was kind enough to be the next artist in the Art Together series. I’ve long admired her work, and first wrote about her while Brown Paper Bag was in its infancy.

Here’s what I sent Mia:

How would you describe your­self, and how long have you been mak­ing pic­tures?

I describe myself as an artist, sto­ry­teller, stu­dent, and part time her­mit! I’ve been mak­ing pic­tures I guess since I can remem­ber. I was lucky enough to have par­ents that let me stick stick­ers all over my bed­room door, and even­tu­ally paint all over my walls when I was young. Later I got inter­ested in col­lage, and then in high school I began to intensely delve into pho­tog­ra­phy. I wanted to show nar­ra­tive and inti­mate por­traits. I started at The School of The Art Insti­tute of Chicago in 2006 study­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, but quickly side­lined into the tex­tiles depart­ment. I loved hav­ing that con­trol over my image in the form of craft. I loved to felt my own wool, to embroi­der lines and draw­ings, and col­lect­ing and using many dif­fer­ent fab­rics. I always kept sketch­books and made draw­ings, but only in the past cou­ple of years, after mov­ing back to North­ern Cal­i­for­nia have I started to draw every day and to paint seri­ously and con­sider those works to be my cur­rent pri­mary works. I am still inter­ested in tex­tiles and other medi­ums, and I will con­tinue to explores these medi­ums. I am just very pas­sion­ate about draw­ing and paint­ing right now.

Have you had the oppor­tu­nity to par­tic­i­pate in many col­lab­o­ra­tions? In what ways was this sim­i­lar or dif­fer­ent than what you’ve done in the past? Or, if it was your first col­lab­o­ra­tion, what did you learn from it?

I’ve been very lucky to par­tic­i­pate in many col­lab­o­ra­tions in the past few years! I love to col­lab­o­rate and see how work­ing in a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment with a new per­son can have an impres­sion on my work and cre­ate some­thing that sur­prises myself. I was recently in a col­lab­o­ra­tive show here in San Fran­cisco, where each artist col­lab­o­rated with another artist, and showed 3 works of their own along with 3 col­lab­o­ra­tions with their cho­sen artist. I worked with Ryan De La Hoz to cre­ate pieces using gouache, ink, paper cut outs, col­ored pen­cil and more com­bin­ing our imagery and ideas. We also worked together to make an instal­la­tion where I painted a mural and Ryan added sculp­tural ele­ments to push our two worlds together. It was a very inter­est­ing and pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence. Most of my col­lab­o­ra­tions have been in per­son, each per­son start­ing a piece (or two, or three) and then we switch, and so on. I have also done sev­eral col­lab­o­ra­tions through the mail, such as ours, and they are fun as well! There is less con­trol because of the lim­ited room for error, so the work tends to be a bit more fresh. It’s nice to see that sur­prise as well once the work is fin­ished on both ends. I’ve been pass­ing back and forth two sketch­books through the mail with Wash­ing­ton D.C. based illus­tra­tor Eliz­a­beth Grae­ber and it’s so much fun to see how we alter each oth­ers work and how things come together.

Here’s how Mia responded, and how our col­lab­o­ra­tion looks (I love it!):

The red cat (or cats) tend to show up in your works. What are the sig­nif­i­cance of these cats? I like to think of them (in this piece) as a way to bring light and hap­pi­ness to my dark fig­ure.

I def­i­nitely see that in this piece. The cats sig­nif­i­cance changes a bit from piece to piece, but gen­er­ally I think of them as pow­er­ful ani­mals (hence the red color) and com­pan­ions or assis­tants to my human fig­ures. The cats cer­tainly have a life of their own. They are play­ful, and often very in scale com­pared to the other fig­ures or objects in a piece. Many of my char­ac­ters are reach­ing out in an attempt to con­nect to some­thing or some­one. The cats may be sit­ting atop a shoul­der, being a good friend, or let­ting some­one bal­ance atop their tail (an impos­si­ble feat in our world) in order to cre­ate a world where things come together as needed. In our piece, the cats seem to be some­what obliv­i­ous to the dark fig­ure you cre­ated. He is a bit cam­ou­flaged in what appears to be a dark ground and some dark foliage, per­haps part of a dark world, and the lit­tle cat has bounced up atop of him and is about the leap into the larger cats arms. They are try­ing to find each other.

While work­ing with this piece, did you have a nar­ra­tive or story in your head? Do you like to work in that way?

I tend to cre­ate lit­tle nar­ra­tives in my head at times, but other times the cre­ation of the work is intu­itive in terms of colors,shapes, com­po­si­tions, and the nar­ra­tive will come after­wards. Some­times I will be think­ing of a nar­ra­tive, but once the piece is fin­ished that nar­ra­tive will change. Some­times the nar­ra­tive par­al­lels some­thing very per­sonal to me, and I will be hes­i­tant to share this nar­ra­tive with the world. I very much encour­age view­ers to cre­ate their own nar­ra­tives when view­ing my pieces. Even if I have my own expla­na­tion or under­stand­ing of what is hap­pen­ing in an imag­ine, I find it fas­ci­nat­ing to hear what comes to oth­ers minds when see­ing my pieces that have become quite per­sonal to me, almost like fam­ily members.

Mia’s work (with cats!):

What inspires you and your visual lan­guage?

I am inspired by so many dif­fer­ent things. I am inspired by the city that I live in, San Fran­cisco, and it’s steep hills and beau­ti­ful Vic­to­rian houses. All of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia is really inspir­ing to me, the ocean and the Red­wood trees. I’ve always loved children’s books like The Jolly Post­man, Babar, Made­line, Richard Scarry books, etc… I adore ani­mals of all kinds, espe­cially sweet furry mam­mals. I have two cats who are brother and sis­ter. I’ve had them for four years and we share my stu­dio. They are end­lessly enter­tain­ing and lov­ing, and give me a lot of inspi­ra­tion. Of course I am inspired by many fine artists. Some of my favorites are Kiki Smith, Eva Hesse, Amy Cut­ler, Maira Kalman, Kandin­sky, Richard Tut­tle, and more! There are so many cre­ative peo­ple work­ing now, it’s hard to keep up with how much beau­ti­ful work is being cre­ated on a daily basis all over the world. I am inspired by writ­ers like Frank O’Hara and Sylvia Plath. My own col­lec­tion of sketch­books are inspi­ra­tion when I have a cre­ative block. See­ing work from past years that can be rein­vented into some­thing I am think­ing of now is inter­est­ing to me. Mate­ri­als are inspir­ing to me! I love see­ing rain­bows of color. It imme­di­ately makes me want to cre­ate when I see art sup­plies, my hands start to itch!

In many of your pieces, you have no visual infor­ma­tion about envi­ron­ments or rather, they are con­tained to the fig­ures that are upon them. Our col­lab­o­ra­tion seems a bit more flushed out — I think it’s the sun in the cor­ner. Was it impor­tant for you to estab­lish a ground?

I felt like our col­lab­o­ra­tion would make sense to have an envi­ron­ment because of the way your fig­ure was set in space. I saw him lit­tle area as a sort of bush, or tiny moun­tains of some sort. The col­ors were so split, I felt like two envi­ron­ments, such as a type of group and a type of sky, would fit in with the con­trast. In my own work I have started to put in lit­tle hints of envi­ron­ment here and there, but still often leave images as sin­gu­lar, iconic images. I am grow­ing more fond of adding envi­ron­ment though because it adds to the nar­ra­tive. Some­times though, I’ll start a piece with some fig­ures, and then add in a group or a room or what have you, and then I will be dis­ap­pointed and feel that the piece was much stronger before. I like to exper­i­ment though and get out dif­fer­ent ideas and images.

Thanks so much, Mia!