Since late 2012, my colleague Diane Orlofsky and I have collaborated on a wonderful project known as "A Joyous Exchange". It began as a conversation about how I might assist her in illustrating a collection of essays that she had written. Ultimately, Diane's essays ("meditations") and my visual interpretations ("illuminations") would conjoin into a collection for both exhibition and print.
Featured in the February issue of "Design Alabama", I was interviewed about my experience as a recipient of a Design Fellowship through the Alabama State Council on the Arts.
In 2017 I was honored to receive a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts to progress towards completing a body of work related to our co-creative process and to create an accompanying book or catalog. In May through July 2018, "A Joyous Exchange: The Art of Collaboration" was exhibited in the International Arts Center of Troy University. This exhibition was comprised of 24 digital art pieces that were paired with 24 corresponding meditations. Included was a 128-page catalog that handsomely presented not only the finished works but also describes in detail the unique, co-creative journey that we experienced.
"A Joyous Exchange" lives in a space where two arts intersect. Each co-creative pairing was inspired by layers and symbols, memories and materials, significant heart-songs and endless possibilities, and explorations of imagination and artistic collaborations in their purest forms.
As you reflect on each meditation and illumination, we hope to convey a bit of what our journey yielded—spontaneity and preparation, inquiry and affirmation, mystery and clarity, spirituality and reality.