It might have been a lit­tle while, but the sec­ond install­ment of Art Together is here! If you aren’t famil­iar with the for­mat of Art Together, it has two dif­fer­ent com­po­nents. A col­lab­o­ra­tive piece is cre­ated between myself and another artist. Based on the fin­ished piece, and con­ver­sa­tion is had about what’s been cre­ated. My hope is to to get to know oth­ers in the cre­ative com­mu­nity a bit bet­ter, and to col­lab­o­rate on some­thing we all care about. You can check out the inau­gural post with Thereza Rowe.

Ana Benaroya is an artist and illus­tra­tor liv­ing in New Jer­sey and the next par­tic­i­pant in Art Together. Here’s what I sent her to work with:



What I received from Ana were two ver­sions of the same piece. While they uti­lized the same piece, Ana manip­u­lated the color and con­trast, giv­ing them fla­vor and feel­ing over­all.

Her response, ver­sion one:

You and I both know that you are an illus­tra­tor and design liv­ing in New Jer­sey, have worked with scads of free­lance clients, and are the co-creator of Egg on Bread along with Ahu Sulker. What else would you like for the inter­webs to know?

Hmmmm, well I pre­fer to remain dark and mysterious…haha, just kid­ding! Basi­cally just that I am a worka­holic and I love what I do. I hope I am lucky enough to be able to keep mak­ing art till the very end!

I enjoy see­ing two dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the same piece — one takes advan­tage of the dif­fer­ent papers and tex­tures (and seems to work on sub­tleties), while the other is visu­ally elec­tric and a bit more in your face . Do you have a favorite? Also, do you feel that one is more akin to your body of work?

I do not have a favorite, I enjoy both for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. But I def­i­nitely believe that The Red War­rior is closer to the style of the rest of my work, which tends to be brightly col­ored and graphic. I believe that they are more suc­cess­ful when shown together, rather then separately.

It’s inter­est­ing look in the way you ori­ented the piece. When I cre­ated my part, I had orig­i­nally ori­ented every­thing with the tri­an­gles on bot­tom. Was there a spe­cific rea­son you chose to cre­ate piece from this way?

Inter­est­ing! Well, to me I guess the blue area seemed more like the ground and the brown area seemed more like the sky (I know, seems counter-intuitive, but I can’t explain). I liked the idea of the tri­an­gu­lar shapes push­ing down on the back of the man. To me, it kept my eye mov­ing up and down within the piece.

Do you think by adding text (and dub­bing them each piece the “blue war­rior” and “red war­rior”, respec­tively) do you see the two men engaged in a con­flict or bat­tle?

I think by adding the text I tied the two pieces together on another level (beyond the fact that they are vari­a­tions on the same image). It cre­ates an abstract nar­ra­tive that can be taken in either a light-hearted or seri­ous man­ner. The men could be two dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als or they could be one and the same. The image itself is a soli­tary one (with only one human within the com­po­si­tion) — but by call­ing the man a war­rior it implies a world out­side of himself.

You have par­tic­i­pated in many col­lab­o­ra­tions over time. How was your approach to this project the same or dif­fer­ent from other endeav­ors in the past?

I actu­ally believe this to be my most suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion. Often­times I think the result of a col­lab­o­ra­tion is a piece that nei­ther artist would like to call their own. The unique voice of each artist is lost and the result is some mutant mish-mash that belongs on another planet. Maybe you feel dif­fer­ently? I don’t know if you would like to call this yours anymore.

I don’t know if my approach was dif­fer­ent this time around, but I was try­ing to remain respect­ful of what you cre­ated and add some­thing that was my own voice that could live within your world. So I guess The Blue War­rior would be more suc­cess­ful in that aspect. The Red War­rior is def­i­nitely closer to my style.

And finally: Where do you think your love of draw­ing mus­cu­lar men comes from?

It prob­a­bly comes from my tomboy­ish child­hood love for super­heroes and action fig­ures. I had a col­lec­tion of over two hun­dred! No Bar­bie dolls for me. From the day I was born I was obsessed with being able to draw mus­cles accu­rately and I would copy anatomy books over and over again. I guess this obses­sion stuck with me. I think child­hood obses­sions and inter­ests always stick with us.

Or maybe deep down inside my sub­con­scious I secretly desire to be a mus­cu­lar man. We may never know.

Thanks, Ana! And, for the record, I am very happy to call this col­lab­o­ra­tion mine.