Artists on Expanded were invited to collaborate with each other to push their practices into unknown territories. This collaboration features Peter Foucault and Shannon Belardi, two artists interested in process and mark making. It is ongoing.
About the Collaboration
The smaller pieces began as digital images of my drawings that I emailed to Peter and were intended to be test drawings/collages. The end result of the nine works were strong enough that we both agreed they could be interesting to show as a group. The marks in the digital images created a light ground for the wonderful heavier marks to float against. We’re now planning to move forward with the construction of an accordion book to display them as a series.
The four larger pieces began as soft ground landscape drawings that I had been working on over the past year. My graphite drawings are made by accumulated marks - hatching, stippling and using pieces of mesh screen to create grid-like marks. I was happy to meet Peter at his studio and pass these original works on to him. After a few weeks, we met up again to review the results, all of which were amazing to me. The addition of ink on top of the graphite produces subtle space through contemplative line tone and weight. These larger works are different from the smaller pieces as they carefully integrate the foreground and background. The ink marks create a delicate structure that curates the space in a very graceful way. I’m very pleased with the results and think that it would be interesting to show these four works together along with the accordion book in an exhibition setting.
Since both of our works include elements of printmaking, we have discussed the potential for collaborating on a larger collaborative print. It will be interesting to see how we can push this further and experiment with other sizes, materials and methods to combine our mark making.
-Shannon Belardi
I have been collaborating with Shannon Belardi on a series of works on paper. We are discovering that our individual marks/styles integrate really well together and are brainstorming further ways to combine marks. Down the line we are hoping to put together an exhibition that will incorporate all of our collaborative pieces.
The smaller pieces (11"x17" each) are created from digital print outs of Shannon's graphite drawings with my ink work and collaged vintage USGS maps and mechanical schematics on top. We are planning on incorporating them into a large accordion folding hand made book.
The larger sheets (16"x24" each) are Shannon's original graphite drawings that I added additional ink work on top of. Since these larger sheets were original pieces, not prints, I wanted to meditate on them for a while and discover the best conceptual approach to working additively to each piece. Shannon's marks range from light ethereal looking cloudscapes and wisps of smoke to more architectural, constructed and organic shapes and fields. Instead of providing a visual contrast to these marks I instead went down the path of trying to harmonize with them, weave in and out of their intricacies and build up subtle volumes and spacial zones that approach materializing into a form or shape. Adding in more graphic collage elements didn’t seem to fit with this series, I wanted to keep my concentration on the black and white linework and tonal values. I was quite pleased with the way the first four pieces have come out. They remind me a little bit of the marks built up in Julie Mehretu’s compositions and the atmospheric brushstrokes and crag marks in Northern Song Dynasty Chinese Landscape Painting. We have discussed working on some medium sized pieces and a few other ideas as well, I am looking forward to seeing what we come up with.
-Peter Foucault
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