Collaborations

Please scroll through the collaborations gallery to read my thoughts on the photographs.

The beginning

In the late 1980s through early 1990s Robin Kelsey-Lehr and I collaborated in a group of large photo collages that we are very proud of.  We started working together soon after we met at Parsons in the mid 1980s.  The work first started when Robin was in Paris and I would send her post cards every day.  They were mostly 16 by 20 self portraits cut into post card 5 by 7 sizes.

Robin took the pieces and tacked them to her cork board in her Parisian apartment.  An art dealer saw them there and thought the work was fresh and unique.  When Robin returned we put four of the initial pieces together for the dealer and showed than at AIPAD.  There was enough critical support that we then worked on larger pieces, all self portraits.  Soon after Robin started bending and creasing the paper in order to give the surface texture.

Mid-period

By 1987-88 we were showing on West Broadway in Soho.  I had already graduated from Parson and Robin went on to use our work to finish her thesis with five large oil paintings.  Soon after this early period Robin decided to work with the paper wet so that she could manipulate it further than she possibly could otherwise. She would mold it around stainless structures to create 3 dimensional images while still using the negative.

We spent the next 4 years working together, for the most part the pieces were nude self portraits with some still lives of flowers thrown in for good measure.  The largest piece we produced is the five masks which is about 5′ by 10′. One of the last pieces we constructed was called “Tar Baby,” it was a globe with all the continents. This was the first piece we made without a negative.  It was considered ground breaking at the time by Rose Slivka of the East Hampton Star.

Today

Today we are currently collaborating on a few new pieces based from my photographs.  I still consider almost all of my work a collaboration, I am constantly asking Robin, “Do you like it this way?”  I then fiddle with it some more until we are both happy with the results.