Creative circle

Create a work of art. Then mail it to another artist. He or she will add to or change it and mail it to another artist, who will create another layer of interpretation.

This creative loop was repeated dozens of times, and the finished pieces made their way home to U.Va.’s McIntire Department of Art. The collaborative process became a 168-page full-color book — “The Land of Wandering,” a project almost two years in the making — in which faculty, alumni and artist friends, almost 30 printmakers and writers, participated. The project is a leap of faith that required respect for the work of all the artists.

This type of dialogue between artists creates works that layer the individual artist’s expressions to create a work that is greater than the sum of its parts, says art professor Dean Dass, who teaches printmaking, as well as courses that focus on the art of the book and papermaking.

“It’s the nature of the print studio to work together,” Dass says. “We think we’re going to get a better result that way, one that no one person would have expected.”

“The Land of Wandering,” which premiered as an art exhibit and a book, is the first part of an undertaking with the overarching title of “Exquisite History.” The larger venture is modeled after the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicles, which began with the Book of Genesis, followed by the history of the world up to 15th-century Germany and culminated in the Apocalypse. Parts two and three of “Exquisite History” are “New World,” which will bring the creation and fall to America, and “Gates of Heaven,” which will encompass a utopian vision that goes vertically through time.

“The Land of Wandering” weaves its story from the perspective of the three major theologies that come out of the East: the Yahwist or J writer of the Old Testament, the core of the Koran, and the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

The artists looked to these oldest writings in our history, interpreting the stories through contemporary artists’ eyes. “We worked in the same tradition and with the same kind of depth as illustrated manuscript artists,” Dass says. “The works may reference historical images or quote an old manuscript illustration, but they are not conventional illustrations.”

As the work passed from one collaborator to another, the layers of images, meanings and methods of printmaking became increasingly complex and opened the artists to dialogue about their work, says Adam Wolpa (Studio Art ’96), who has worked with Dass for eight years on exchange portfolios that involved each artist creating their own work, an individual interpretation of a common theme. The shared project has grown into a collaborative work that is more complex and involves artists and writers from across the country and Europe.

In addition to sending the prints back and forth, many members of the group gathered during a weeklong summer session to continue the collaborative relationship face to face.

“Negotiating ideas. Sharing philosophies. Working together in a shop … brings those different ideas to the table,” Wolpa says. “The project becomes a compilation of many voices.”

Poet Lisa Russ Spaar, director of the U.Va. Creative Writing Program, applauds the collaborative scholarship of the project and the opportunity to explore the relationship between visual and poetic grammar in her own poetry. The project touched on themes she has wanted to write about, and several of her poems grew directly out of the works coming out of the print shop. For the past two years, Spaar and Dass have team-taught an advanced class in printmaking and poetry.

They, and other artists in the group, also collaborated on “Circular Ruins,” a project that carried on the tradition of artists and poets, such as William Blake, who conceived of the two mediums of artistic expression as interconnected and emerging from the same muse. That project culminated in a handmade book of original prints, owned by the U.Va. Special Collections Library.

“The sense and process that printmaking is about is being fearless,” Spaar says. “Wonderful things can happen when you start mixing things up.” Blurring the lines between printmaking and poetry, some of the printmakers imported texts from poems by Spaar and others into the images they created.

“The whole project pushes the boundaries of the Academical Village,” says Spaar. “It’s one of the most exciting projects I have been involved in since I came to U.Va. as an undergrad in the 1970s.”

The book portion of the project further expanded the concept of collaboration. Four members of the group gathered around a computer at the University of Iowa, laying out the graphic design of the book. Two faculty members and four graduate students from the University of Iowa’s print program contributed to the project. The book design involved another layering, as some of the pages are collages of the images and others involve editing and layering as the images passed through the collective talents of the group.

The 168-page, full-color book, titled “ex.hi, vol. 1,” is not like a catalog but is a further tightening of the project’s artistic expression, Dass says. “It pushes the project out of the print shop and allows the work to reach others.”

The University of Virginia Press distributes the book. Penelope Kaiserlian, director of the press, was impressed with the art book created for the “Circular Ruins” project and agreed to distribute “The Land of Wandering” and the two other volumes of “Exquisite History,” which the artists expect to complete in the next two years.

She said the press has made the book available to art museum stores and art book stores — venues that “appreciate a fine piece of book art making.”

The project challenges the modern idea of a solo genius set apart creating a work of art, Wolpa says. “You give up control with collaboration. The postmodern idea that there are really no new ideas, just reworking of old ideas — this project is a way of acknowledging that.”