At the start of 2011, ArtClub II began an ambitious collaborative project to develop thirteen unique works built from the separate, but connected voices of thirteen artists. What started out as a stack of blank sketchbooks became a finished volume of visual journals. The journals document fluid conversations in paint and pencil, collage, found objects, paper cutting and mark-making that emerged week-after-week as each artist imprinted the books with their personal signature.

 

Inspired by selected themes and urged on by the work of their peers, the artists explored a dialogue of the real and abstract, challenging themselves to stretch beyond the individual statement to create from a communal palette of consciousness. The books are rich with the beautiful and profane, one artist bringing the light that makes way for the shadow of the next. Time spent with the books will uncover layer upon layer of careful skill and technique, spontaneity, action, reaction, humor and wit. What has emerged from this experiment is a set of works that can each stand boldly alone or, when viewed as a collection, demonstrate how the whole can be greater than a sum of it’s parts.