Pink Story Project
Story
pink story: sinistral/dextral, a book work by Marlene MacCallum in collaboration with Barb Hunt. For Acknowledgements & Thanks: go here.
History of the collaboration and development of the book work
Barb Hunt's exhibition PINK was at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery from Sept. 26 - Nov. 2, 2002. One of the pieces in this exhibit was titled pink story (with apologies to GNK). I approached Barb Hunt to ask if she was interested in taking this piece into the form of a book work. It was agreed that this would be an exciting collaboration and the process began.
Several maquettes were made over the ensuing months. This process involved each artist taking turns independently playing with the evolving piece, bringing their own ideas and approaches to bear on the work's development. The work has arrived at a two-volume structure with each volume being the work of primarily one artist, but informed by the other. Pink story: dextral is based on the idea of Barb Hunt's piece, but reworked into a new structure and formal organization. Pink story: sinistral uses my images, sequenced into an arrangement that echoes the structure of pink story: dextral.
The production of the book work
The production of this two volume book work is also a collaboration. I am fortunate to be working with seven research assistants, all of them students or alumni of the Visual Arts Program at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College. Additionally, David Morrish is collaborating on the letterpress printing stage and Tara Bryan, of Flatrock, NL, with the binding.
The final maquettes were translated into the print matrices with the invaluable assistance of several people. Alyssa Andrews took the maquette for dextral and created a template on mylar using the actual paint chips. Nick Dawson began the process of turning this into stencils. Shirley Greer finalized the making of the photostencils while Nick prepared all of the screens. The screens were then exposed and prepared for printing.
The 77 individual paint chips from Barb's original installation had to be translated into screen printing ink. The colour matching was done by Linda Foulds. The paper was cut to size by Jacqueline Lambert. The screenprinting was done by Marlene, Alyssa, Shirley, Jackie, Lacey Haskell and Nick. Nick and Matthew Hollett handset the type of each of the colour names. The letterpress printing was done by Marlene and David with help from Matthew and Nick.
Pink story: sinistral consists of twelve photogravure images, all made by Marlene. Letterpress is also used in this volume. Printing assistance for the editioning of the photogravure plates was done by Linda Foulds. Information on the photogravure process is available at our web site www.photogravure.ca.
Each of the volumes are hand bound and contained within a wrapper.
The process of making this book work has been documented and developed into a web site by Matthew Hollett.
Collaborative content
In creating pink story: sinistral/dextral, we are bringing together two seemingly contradictory representations of a woman's life. Pink story: dextral is an artificially constructed narrative of a stereotypical woman's life. Paint chips offer the promise of covering flaws, and the paint surface creates a façade. In contrast to this external perspective, Pink story: sinistral presents an internalized story; constructed of photographs that represent spaces metaphoric of key stages in a woman's life. The use of the tile format in both volumes links the pieces together formally, and the visual narratives become mosaics. The result is two volumes that are like mirror images, reflecting each other, and offering to the viewer a paradoxial reality.
In her catalogue essay for PINK, Charlotte Jones characterizes Barb Hunt's method as "gentle subversion that turns accepted norms and stereotypes topsy-turvy". In the catalogue essay for Theatrum Mundi, Susan Gibson Garvey describes Marlene MacCallum's work as "providing a kind of jamais vu experience, the familiar is made strange through visual and mental inversions." In this collaborative project, the domesticity, sexuality and mortality of Barb Hunt's work meets with the "phenomenology of the mundane" employed by Marlene MacCallum.
This collaboration brings together two artists who use very different strategies and means to address similar issues and deal with overlapping concerns. By challenging ourselves with the collaborative process, our individual languages are enriched and our visual vocabularies expanded. Additionally, working this way challenges each of us to take on unfamiliar processes and methodologies.
Individual Artists' Statements
Barb Hunt's Artist Statement for PINK and pink story
Living in Newfoundland with its rich tradition of domestic textile practices has inspired me to focus on these processes and materials in my art. These allow me to express my interest in the routines of everyday life, the cycles of life, and the rituals of mourning. The 'feminine' has been historically defined as the small and less important. To counter this I collect avidly, accumulating and caring for objects of little worth. In my work, I play with gender stereotypes by interweaving both contradictory and supportive correlation between material, image, and process. By giving value to personal detritus and almost-forgotten remnants, I hope to recuperate lost histories and encourage the reconsideration of traditional rituals within a contemporary context.
The piece pink story started when collecting paint chips to decide on my house colour. It seemed obvious that many of the names of the colours relate to different stages of a woman's life: for example, baby girl, doll's dress, cheekie, sweet 16 pink, blush, full bloom, pink beauty, (then she gets married...) celebrate, champagne fizz, bridesmaid, (then there's the wedding night...) rapture, pink caress, and the series ends (of course!) with "bed of roses".
Marlene MacCallum's Artist Statement
At the basis of my work is an interest in the visual construction of illusory interior spaces that conjure up the marvelously mundane. My conceptual focus for years was the observation and interpretation of the private domestic arena. From 1985-99, my home and immediate environs were the sources for photographic explorations which were then translated into prints. In my current work, my earlier focus remains but is now expanded to include a broader range of architectural types. The internal contradictions in each image provide the visual equivalent of the paradoxes we experience in interior spaces. I approach the architectural spaces as a visual theatre of the everyday.
Since 1994, I have been working with photogravure. The interaction of ink and paper have a tactile and physical presence while simultaneously evoking a state of photographic memory. In 1997, I introduced the book format and the use of text, and letterpress printing, into my practice. These texts and images explore issues along parallel paths, independently addressing similar content so as to generate associations rather than provide explanations. The binding and structure of the book works use the traditional book form as the basis but then subvert the conventions so that the physical and temporal experience of reading the book relates to the content.
