On September 7th & 8th 2019, 30 artists with various backgrounds from around Oregon all met for the first time to spend the weekend together and make art. 

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The experiment was conjured up by Michael O'Connor, an event organizer focusing on visual artists. The artists met at The Geode, a beautiful new building located in Portland, Oregon where they would spend 2 days together painting with an unknown partner.

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Artists were broken up into 3 groups under the supervision of a curator. Then the artists were paired up with each other to produce and complete one work of art. I was paired with a young artist from Wilsonville, Audra Harley. Each group also had a theme for their creations. Our group's theme was "Fire & Ice". 

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Our theme of “Fire & Ice” was interpreted in so many different ways and it’s interesting to see how everyone was expressing that theme on canvas. Audra and I both knew almost instantly how we were going to approach our theme. We both share a similar style and subject of work already and were all set to dive in and get started. We were not allowed to talk to each other for the first 20 minutes, but that wasn't an issue for us at all. We showed each other images of our work, point out areas, sketched out a plan and were ready to rock n' roll. We were very excited.

We chose to paint a snow capped mountain at dawn. This allowed us to really play around with the colors and incorporate the alpenglow at the top of our mountain which represents the fire on the ice. We both worked throughout the painting, communicating with one another the entire time. We made suggestions and had discussions regarding compositions, colors, textures and techniques.  I kept wanting to light one of our trees on fire, but we agreed on a campfire instead. 

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By the end of Sunday we calculated we had spent a solid 11 hours of work into our painting. My hands were shot, sore, weak and swollen. My feet were so tired I took off my shoes at one point and left them off. I was ready for an ice pack and a glass of bubbly.  We were very pleased with what we had created. 

 

On top of all this, the whole event was filmed! Yes, we were being watched the entire time. I usually hate when people watch me work, but I didn't seem to mind the cameras too much.  They were surprising easy to ignore, which was probably due to the extreme concentration it took to complete our goal. The only difficult part I found was the 2 camera interviews. I don't usually do well with being filmed as I tend to get nervous, lose my thoughts and my mind and mouth no longer communicate.  I prefer visual communication over verbal, that's for sure! 

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I think what I have enjoyed the most about the Art Social event is coming together with other people who also have a desire for creating art. It’s a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by those who share that passion. The whole place seemed to be alive and humming along at the same creative frequency. It was like we were all feeding off of that energy. It has been an absolute pleasure to be apart of this event. I think every single piece of art that was produced that weekend turned out amazing. So many stunning works of art were created in just a few hours. 

I want to thank all the hard working people who made this event happen. There were a lot of moving pieces in this project and many people were involved.

Thank you Michael for putting this show together. It has been so much fun to be a part of it. The art social has been a wonderful challenge and experience and I would love to see it continue and possibly become an annual event. I would definitely do it all over again.

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The documentary will be released late 2019 and an auction of the works will also take place around the same time. 

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