I’m really excited to share a new fea­ture of Brown Paper Bag called Art Together. Part of the mis­sion of BPB is to help facil­i­tate a dia­logue amongst the grow­ing, global com­mu­nity of artists and cre­atives. I’ve always loved the idea of col­lab­o­ra­tion and the process of two (or more) peo­ple work­ing together. Art Together is an attempt to rec­on­cile two ideas — to get to know oth­ers in the cre­ative com­mu­nity a bit bet­ter, and to col­lab­o­rate on some­thing we all care about.

Thereza Rowe was kind enough to col­lab­o­rate with me on this project — the inau­gural piece to this ever-growing project of Art Together! Essen­tially, the process is this:

I cre­ate a piece of art for the artist in which I am col­lab­o­rat­ing with. After I feel that my part is done, I ship it off via the postal ser­vice. My col­lab­o­ra­tor receives the project, and adds, sub­tracts, changes, and responds to what I have sent them. After they are done, they send me the image. Based on the fin­ished prod­uct, I con­struct a set of ques­tions to ask that are both rel­e­vant to the piece and to the artist themselves.

So, here is what I sent Thereza (who lives across the pond):

And here is where Thereza took the piece:

Just for ice-breaking pur­poses, how would you describe your­self (in a short sen­tence or two)?

Some­one who some­how has remained a child at heart, a daydreamer…I imag­ine a lot and then I want it all to come to life, now! Yes, I’m a very ‘now’ person.

What were your first thoughts after receiv­ing my part of the project in the mail?

I thought it was beau­ti­ful and con­nected with it straight away… it looked like a lit­tle por­tal, a gate­way to a mag­i­cal world… I kept it up on the work­space so I could enter it every­day and took my time to actively approach it as I wanted the piece to com­mu­ni­cate to me how our inter­ac­tion would happen.

This out­come (in the best way pos­si­ble!) dif­fers from my orig­i­nal expec­ta­tions of the col­lab­o­ra­tion. What inspired you to cre­ate a book, or a story — some­thing more com­plex than the orig­i­nal piece I had sent you?

The piece arrived dur­ing a par­tic­u­larly extra busy work­ing spell and I was feel­ing quite over­whelmed because I was in the process of fin­ish­ing off a cou­ple of projects and had lit­tle time to start any­thing else.

This is usu­ally when I feel kind of ‘over­whelmed ‘due to my ‘now’ per­son­al­ity. I like to move on swiftly to the next adven­ture and my work sched­ule doesn’t always allow me to do so…

Enchanted by your piece, I decided to chan­nel that feel­ing into it and would visit it every morn­ing as a first thing before the start of my nor­mal work day. It soon became my per­sonal magic por­tal, some­thing that would give me that daily ‘imagine/create’ moment.

The for­mat also appealed to me so last thing at night I’d cut up a piece of paper of the same dimen­sions and approach it over my morn­ing cof­fee along with my box of papers and scissors.

Not wor­ry­ing too much about the out­come, I just aimed to enjoy the process of draw­ing with scis­sors let­ting the free flow of imag­i­na­tion lead the way on how the cut ups and jux­ta­po­si­tions would come together to cre­ate a narrative.

There are mul­ti­ple nar­ra­tives in our col­lab­o­ra­tion. Did you feel like you needed to add a nar­ra­tive to the piece? In all of your work?

I like to cre­ate and tell lit­tle sto­ries, I think one can see that through­out my work. That’s prob­a­bly why I felt so com­fort­able with this col­lab­o­ra­tion. The non lin­ear nar­ra­tive of the piece just hap­pened naturally.

What inspires you to cre­ate, and how do you think it helped shape this work?

The world as I see it inspires me daily and dri­ves me to keep cre­at­ing. I love colour, shape and play­ing with those ele­ments makes me happy. No dif­fer­ent with this project, as I said before it hap­pened quite naturally.

Do you see shapes/characters/etc. in this work (as well as the rest of your port­fo­lio) that you have been drawing/creating for many years past? In other words, is there a piece of your work that’s trav­eled with you through­out the years?

I wouldn’t say a par­tic­u­lar piece of work but my tools (i.e. colour, shape, scis­sors, pens, love of paper, etc.) I always carry sketch­books, pens and a cam­era wher­ever I go as I’m obsessed about doc­u­ment­ing my own process. Also my love of ani­mals, some­times I feel I iden­tify and inter­act bet­ter with ani­mals than I do with peo­ple… i think that ‘s also reflected in my work as a whole.

And lastly…You col­lab­o­rate on a vari­ety of projects. What moti­vates you to do so?

I guess the joy of shar­ing a process moti­vates and excites me immensely. An adven­ture that’s shared is always a nicer one. It’s a good feel­ing… I just wish there were more hours in a day so I could do more…

Thanks again to the lovely Thereza Rowe for par­tic­i­pat­ing and tak­ing the time cre­ate a great piece of work!