We dropped in to visit another one of our “Common Ground” artist teams this week while they were at work in the studio and got a sneak peek of their colorful work-in-progress.
Marianne Chapel Junker is the founding director of the SPAACES Art Foundation and Gallery, which is a collaborative lead in the “Common Ground” project along with FACEing Mental Ilness and SRQ Strong. Yajaira Urzua-Reyes, is a 2021 New College of Florida graduate and a native of Mexico who moved to the United States at the age of 6. Both are professional artists with excellent training and a wealth of talent.
They were delighted to immediately discover one coincidental commonality they share: both are painters who primarily work with oils, whereas many artists today prefer acrylics.
Though neither of the two have ever worked on a collaborative piece with another artist — and though they are separated in age by more than 25 years — both say they’ve thus far very much enjoyed working together and haven’t experienced a single hiccup in their creative process.
Before beginning to think about what they would paint, the two spent a long time talking about their past struggles and the coping mechanisms they’ve developed to deal with their challenges. Despite the differences in their histories — Marianne’s emotional hurdles come primarily from trauma in her past, while Yajaira has struggled more recently with anxiety and insecurity — they found they did indeed share a lot of “common ground.”
“After finding someone to talk to, you realize you’re not alone, you have more in common than you realize,” Yajaira says.
Their conversations led them to envision a painting that would capture both the “tangled mess in our minds” (represented by squiggly, abstract lines) and the interlacing of their experiences (represented in their two figures overlapped). They began by taking photographic self portraits and then juxtaposing them with the use of Photoshop. Using a projector, they projected the combined image onto a blank canvas and sketched in the major elements in the painting.
Since both have sought solace for their struggles in nature — and since Yajaira’s recent work has focused on a plant known as a “monstera” — a lush jungle of leaves and greenery provides the backdrop for their tangled figures.
“I started my plant series after working on my very emotionally and physically draining thesis process, which focused on violence at the border,” says Yajaira. “I picked the purple passion plant for my final school project and painting it became very meditative.”
Marianne, who recently completed a narrative series for a show called “Constructing Utopia” at the Softwater Gallery in St. Pete says they have yet to come up with a name for their piece, though they both like the idea of “intertwined.”
Working simultaneously on a single canvas has been “surprisingly easy,” both partners agree.
“We just naturally switch sides without really saying much,” Marianne says. “We’re quiet a lot; it’s kind of soothing. So far it’s been a really rewarding experience.”
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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