Artists’ Statements
Abby Shahn:
Many years ago, I was invited to put up a show at the University of Maine at Orono. I had wondered at the time if various visual artists that I knew had a visual “language” in common: if one of us made a gesture or mark on an image whether the others would understand the reasons and meanings of it or not. I was loathe to use the word language because it implies a verbal type of communication. What interested me was the thought that we had in common a visual rather than verbal language. A bunch of us began to send images and other tidbits to each other. It was a series of dialogues between artists. We would send stuff back and forth to each other in the mail. That began it. Over the years I’ve made collaborative books with many of my friends. Some of these books blossomed. Some got neglected and forgotten.
Making a book with Véronique was an added experiment. It was the first book I had done with someone who didn’t describe herself as an artist, although I knew that Véronique spent much of her time looking at art and understood it as well as most artists I know. I like the way that the nature of a piece of art evolves as it’s being created. Our book is growing very nicely. My preconceptions are being questioned in ways that I enjoy.
Véronique Plesch:
The book Abby and I have been working on for a while now (at a rather leisurely pace!) is witness to our friendship, made up of marks that document a non-verbal conversation.
It all started with the book itself, which Abby had made expressly for us, and which she gave me on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2019 as we met up at a friend’s art show. It took me quite a while before I dared to draw in it, daunted by the blank pages and the prospect of collaborating with a real artist. I eventually dove in, opening the book according to Abby’s written instructions on the cover: “this is the front/this way up.” I drew on most of one side of the accordion book, and collaged remnants of old wallpaper and pages from an antique book Abby had tucked in the book. On a warm and sunny April Saturday a year ago, I brought the book back to Abby (first stopping in front of the South Solon Meeting House to photograph it, propped on a low stone wall). This was the beginning of the pandemic, so we sat outside Abby’s house, maintaining proper social distancing, and with great trepidation I handed over the book to her. When I got it back with Abby’s additions and responses to the marks I had made, I noticed that some of the dark paint she had applied had bled through the paper and was visible on the other side. These accidental marks provided the impetus for some of my next set of interventions as I traced and highlighted the stains. Looking back to our interactions in and through our book, I realize that our marks not only respond to each other’s but also engage with the matter each of us has previously applied upon the paper, for instance, dissolving some of the painted surfaces and blending them with new color. With the paint bleeding through the paper, the support itself became invested with our exchanges. Our conversation is more than a piling up of layers but also, just like ancient palimpsests, which consisted in scraping the original text before inscribing the vellum with a new one, it involves a movement into the support’s density. Our book also marks moments in time and place; those spent physically apart but in pictorial company and those together as we passed on the book. A site for our encounters, it also holds their memory.
Abby Shahn and Véronique Plesch, Our Book, mixed media, 2019—.
Abby Shahn and Véronique Plesch, Our Book, mixed media, 2019—.
Abby Shahn and Véronique Plesch, Our Book, mixed media, 2019—.
View more of Abby Shahn’s work on her artist page.