For as long as she can remember, Erika Schlunk has relied on shredding or winding paper as a self-calming technique. But it wasn’t always looked on favorably by others. Her family often tried to discourage the practice and she distinctly remembers being reprimanded in fifth grade for making paper swords.
“Paper was my ‘fidget,” say Erika, 24, referring to the toys children with sensory processing disorders often use to self-regulate and reduce anxiety. “Now, it’s rubber bands, but playing with paper is something I’ve been doing all my life.”
Meanwhile, her partner in the Common Ground project, Christine Gahagan, a professional sculptor from Vermont, says “I’m not mentally straight in my head unless my hands are in clay.”
Their mutual reliance on keeping their hands occupied as a means of self-calming as well as a creative spur gave these Common Ground partners an immediate connection and eventually led to their choice of materials and process for the artwork they are creating for the April exhibition.
As a catalyst for exploring their commonalities before embarking on their artwork, they located some worksheets used for cognitive behavioral therapy and wrote down answers to the questions in watercolor pencil. Sometimes they responded separately and then shared their answers; sometimes at the beginning of a meeting they talked about their responses together.
“It turned out I needed a lot of the same things she did in my tool kit,” says Christine.
Those worksheets — as well as some journal entries — became not only the thoughts behind their Common Ground project, but the actual construction materials for their piece. Using torn pieces of the worksheets dipped in rice glue (which makes the watercolor answers run and “bleed”) they are constructing a tree using a papier mache type method. Additionally, long pieces of paper Erika has wound into tight, thin, tubes like straws will be used for branches.
“I thought that was really freakin’ cool,” says Erika. “The mental health part is actually within the construction.”
The tree, Christine says, “represents the interplay between damage and growth. A tree can be hurt and wounded but it doesn’t kill the tree; it adjusts and grows on. It’s a metaphor for how we put ourselves back together and learn to leverage our cracks and our wounds.”
The process has been a creative stretch for both women. Christine typically works with clay and Erika’s previous artwork has primarily been done with computer graphics on an IPad.
The two work together, with the tree between them on a lazy Susan platform, rotating it frequently so that no one artist’s work dominates a particular part of the sculpture.
“That way you can’t tell what is hers and which is mine,” says Christine.
As the bonsai-like tree has taken shape, they’ve decided to add some additional elements — a knot hole; a device that will allow the tree to be lit from within (Erika’s father is helping them with that); and also an owl — another metaphor, but one Christine “doesn’t want to look ‘cartoon-y.’”
“One amazing thing I’ve learned from her is how to communicate more forcefully,” says Gahagan, who says Erika is “not so different” from her 30- and 32-year-old daughters. “Our goal is to be an owl.”
Erika says working with Christine has been “a huge bonding thing” and one that, as Christine puts it, “brings us both into a state of creative calm.”
“It’s built some confidence that I’m working on something like this,” Erika says. “It gets the junk out and puts it into creativity.”
She still finds it amusing though, that their creation is allowing her to do something she was told not to do for many years.
Erika looks bemused as she watches Christine testing the placement of some of her paper “straws” into the tree trunk.
“My family can’t believe you’re encouraging me,” she says, laughing.
All participants in “Common Ground,” including the collaborating organizers, are donating their time to the project. If you’d like to help with the expenses involved in art materials, promotion and exhibition costs, we welcome tax-deductible donations to the SPAACES Art Foundation (nonprofit EIN 84-500-4237). You can donate online at the SPAACES website (https://spaaces.art) or you can send a check to SPAACES, at 2087 Princeton St., Sarasota, FL 34237.
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