I have started a new collaboration with my friend, Mario Alberico. Mario is an old friend from college (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign…Go Illini!). I was rooming with his wife, Claudia, when they met and fell in love. Mario was majoring in Art History and I was in Graphic Design. Claudia was studying Interior Design. A year later, I met my husband, Scott, who was getting his Masters in Industrial Engineering. We all got married right out of school and have been great friends ever since! Our kids were born about the same time and we hung out together quite a bit when we lived back in Chicago. We make a point to see them every time we travel to Chicago. A few years ago, Mario built a gorgeous studio on the third floor of their home and we always take some time to hang out and talk about “ART” during our visit.
Mario is primarily a painter but he does incorporate collage and mixed media into his work. We have talked about collaborating in the past, but finally bit the bullet and the last time I was in Chicago, we organized a studio day to get started.
Mario working on the box assemblage for the Gandhi Project
Mario had been hard at work getting a box assemblage started. Outside his comfort zone for sure! I loved it and appreciated the fact that he was sensitive to my preference for assemblage, sculpture and collage. He had been collecting some objects over the years but not really doing too much with them. Now he has an outlet!
The beginning
We spent a lot of time talking and ultimately decided to use Gandhi as our starting point, our inspiration. Our goal for the project is to create a modular installation.We will create some pieces together. We will do some work independently and we will send some work back and forth in the mail.
To get started, we rummaged through his studio and put objects into the box, took objects out, painted, painted again. We will work on the central assemblage together when we can arrange visits. In the meantime, we have are working on three large electrical junction boxes to incorporate into the installation. We will each work on a box independently in our studios and send the third box back and forth in the mail along with a journal to communicate with each other.
Neither one of us has any preconceived idea of how this will turn out. Right now…it’s process more than product.
I am reading and learning about Gandhi and how his principles fit into my life. It’s immediately apparent that it’s not really about Gandhi…it’s about us and how we want to live our lives…
But that is for another post! Stay tuned!
Laura:
This looks like the beginning of a very cool project. I will be following it for sure.
Janet