The Belated Answer to a Dialogue Across Media with Susan Lenz

Ten years ago, I had a pleasant visit with the fiber artist Susan Lenz. We were trying something unusual for western artists - an art dialogue across media but on the same page. I had always wanted to try something like this as I was familiar with art dialogues in China; one artist creates a painting and another artist writes on it, or sometimes they paint on the same piece of paper. But the rugged individualism of American art would make such a process almost unheard of here. Yet we persisted. I brought out some abstract paintings and Susan attached embroideries. I came across these things again and realized that the dialogue was never finished. I made the art statement. Susan commented on it with an embroidery. Only now I realized that in keeping with the tradition I had learned, it was up to me to answer the embroidered comment. So this week I have - one decade after the fact. (Speed is not something I count as one of my feature qualities. )

The embroidered comments in my abstract paintings I found, as I revisited them, were rich with shapes, textures and details. My answers to these embroidered comments, then, was to work those shapes and details back in to the paintings. In the first work this was accomplished through stamped designs and textured surfaces. Coppery looking threads were used in most of the fiber fragments so I threaded iridescent copper paint over the surface of the surrounding paintings. In the second completion, I added a square collage with a rubbing of a Chinese character from one of my previous carvings. The claw and whisker like additions prompted me to change the title of this work from "The Medal," to "Claws and Whiskers."


The last collaborative painting/embroidery was something of a challenge. It was an embroidery of a leaf over my painting of blue with red and white stripes. This collaborative work was entitled "Flag." My answer to the added leaf was to print stamped leaf designs in to the painted surface. Hidden in Susan’s embroidery were tiny designs in black thread almost like a cartouche. My answer to that was to write in Chinese characters on the flag using the same thin black thread like strokes. I believe all of these works are finally complete, unified and answered.

Enjoy the images of the challenge and these belated answers to the challenge.