Collaboration: Exquisites Crowned

Lisa Figueroa, Wendy Browne, Patricia L Smith

The Victorian drawing game “Exquisite Corpses” often had surprising and hilarious results. Basically, a blank piece of paper is folded into thirds. Participants began by drawing a head or top of a creation/creature on the top third, indicating where the image would continue onto the middle section. The paper is passed middle section up to the second artist to depict their version of the middle section. The third person adds their interpretation of a ‘bottom’ on the final section. Try it!

Wendy Browne, Lisa Figueroa and I explored Vancouver’s East End Cultural Crawl in the fall of 2016, brainstorming toward a shared project for three female artists with such differing visual voices. The notion of pushing the surprises presented by playing our version of ‘Exquisite Corpses’ into finished works arose from conversations initiated on this adventure.

To began, we each completed a three-panel creature and met to see how our panels might relate in different combinations. Considering we each had independently depicted human females; it was agreed to consider and celebrate femininity through the series. Each creation was to wear a crown in celebration of their exquisite feminine energy. We each contributed five compositions to the game.

To complete the game we collaborated on two six foot tall ‘Exquisites Crowned’ – Cat Woman and Walking on Water using one piece from each artist.

Commissioned in 2000, this 8 x 12′ mural is displayed on the entrance wall to the Credit Union in Enderby. Community members helped work on sections of this large composition in an acrylic painting workshop.

I designed this Roots and Blues mural with Joan Miro in mind. Some of my wonderful was  JL Jackson Jr school art students helped to enlarge the image, paint and organize for the many community volunters at the end of the 1998 school year…. as we were packing up the school to move to a new site. Yikes! The 30 8×4′ plasticized advertising panels were painted with semi-gloss exterior house paint. Running 120′, it was wired to a fence each August during the music festival. Despite damage incurred during storms, repeated instillations and storage, most of these panels were displayed until this year.

Mosaic & Tile: A small selection of specialized & commissioned works.