finis

well, for this chapter of the process anyway!

Way back in March, Lynne Hoppe and I began a collaborative book process, which I first posted about here, and she started here.

detail from Karin's book cover

About a month ago I started the last couple of pages that I wanted to do, before sending Lynne her book back to her.

detail from Lynne's book cover

Every day I'd see the book sitting open, looking up at me with it's colorful patch, waiting for more, but without a definitive deadline, I allowed other projects to step to the front of the line.

detail from an interior page of Lynne's book

So, after spending a wonderful weekend catching up with our nephew (my husband's brother's son), who has just come back to New York after spending 2 years in Mali, Africa, doing research for his PhD in African history at Columbia, I put paintbrush to paper and finished up!

You can see my earlier posts of what Lynne had created for when the book arrived, and how I began working over what she had started here and here, and then where I started on a couple of blank pages here.

click on images for closer view

These are my final pages to the installment. The white squares, representing prayer flags, are two ply paper towels separated from each other. Placed side by side, created by mopping up color from previous painting and paint brush cleaning, their colored patterns mirror each other. I coated them with gel medium, and adhered the one on the left hand page directly to the book page, and allowed the right hand side to float freely, attaching it only at the top edge. I gessoed all around the edges, over the color on the flags, to soften and feather in the color.

The cool thing about this process is that by the time Lynne gets done with them, there may be no hint left to the colors or lettering or anything that I've started with them. They could become something completely different, or disappear altogether, becoming a hint of texture beneath a series of other layers!

The symbol of OM is painted in gold on the left page,

_____

and PEACE is written in hebrew on the right. (Gotta love Google Translate!!)

Beneath the flag, she'll find a watcher to their waving...