Babel Collaborations

There have been about 17 participants in this collaboration so far, with just 3 sets outstanding, but mostly on their way.  They have been collated into three pocket books for the New Alexandrian Library and one set has gone to Japan for exhibition in December.  Each participant received 5 other altered copies of Babel.

Here are some of the USA collaborations received:

                                                    Cheryl Penn/John Bennett (USA)

Cheryl Penn/Allan Bealy (USA)

Cheryl Penn/Rosaire Appel (USA)

Cheryl Penn/Mark Sonnenfeld (USA)

Cheryl Penn/Alicia Starr (USA)

Babel Edition 9

Original (Cheryl Penn)

# 1 Cheryl Penn (South Africa) and David Stone. Edition of 20.

I have not done a large collaboration for quite a quite a while, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how it pans out.  The idea is that I send participants 2 copies of a chapbook titled Babel, one to keep and one to alter.  The original altered copy is sent back to me and I make an edition of 7.  I keep one, two get sent back to the artist, one bound, one unbound for them to copy and reproduce if they wish.  They also receive 5 other chapbooks from other artists who have followed this same process. The first one I have tackled is with the poet David Stone (USA). David exchanged words via email. As a wordsmith David is immediately responsive to titles and images and his poetry is its usual enigmatic, apparently disconnected phrases and words which, once read somehow make total sense. They also evoke strong mental imagery. 

“bracketed barriers enclosed the summation of

orders

toes tagged

silence lost” 

As I had a bit of time on my hands, the copies I made have numerous hand painted elements, but I‘m not sure if this practice will remain, although 7 copies is quite manageable. There are an extra few copies for him and I to both distribute. I will be using this small volume as an enticement - (I hope!) for others to join in the collaboration. 

Original chapbook which was altered