Collaborative Work: Digital Photography and Collage

An upcoming exhibit titled Beijing Impressions: A Multi-Media Collaboration combines multi-layered photographic imagery from Barbara Tyroler’s Beijing Impressions series with a brand new set of collaborative, hand made, paper collages by Sandy Milroy.

Sandy reflects, ” Our introduction to working together came when Barbara asked to come to my studio to see what I was doing in the area of collage making. She was fascinated by my materials, a wide range of handmade papers which were covering most of the work surfaces as well as arranged by color groupings in files. This initial visit led to a series of “studio portraits”, visits to her studio to see how she uses the Photoshop program to make many alterations to her pictures, and incorporating new layers of light and color which lend an abstract and layered quality to her photography.

We began a dialogue about working together on her Beijing Impressions series. Her artist’s tools are the camera and its lenses, her computer and its programs, and the types of paper she prints on. My artist’s tools are a variety of scissors, straight edges, as well as hand-torn paper I’ve collected and often modified with layers of paint or by stamping and marbling.”

Barbara notes, “In 2012, when I first met Sandy on the Orange County Arts Guild tour, I was working on an extension of my Beijing Impressions photographic series, which was a response to the political and social upheaval confronting the working class and migrant populations of  the  Beijing area, and the environmental pollution affecting them.

As Sandy and I prepared for an exhibition together, we wanted to focus on my Chinese work because of our common use of layering and impressionistic markings. We considered responding to current political and cultural issues, specifically environmental pollution, a major problem in Beijing today. However, rather than a thematic tie, we found our collaborative process became the most cohesive element when we addressed the aesthetic components of our art. We then decided to treat the original China imagery as source material for combining realism with abstraction through digital compositing and paper collage.”

Barbara and Sandy will be hosting a reception to this work  on October 12, 2014 from 1-3 pm. at The Community Church of Chapel Hill, Unitarian Universalist on Purfoy Rd. The work will be on view until October 26th.

See Sandy’s website and Barbara’s website for many samples of their individual work.