Collaboration With Kelda Martensen

This body of work is a collaboration between the artists Stephanie Barenz and Kelda Martensen. Each artist started five panels and then sent them through the mail to be completed by the other. Martensen maintains a studio practice focused in the paper, book and print arts and serves as an arts educator in the greater Seattle, Washington community. They both attended Washington University in St. Louis for graduate school, which is where they met and formed a friendship.

During their time at graduate school they discovered that their work had several conceptual and formal elements in common. These included the themes of journeying, shifting definitions of home, and the relationship one has to their neighborhood. Both also have strong backgrounds in printmaking that merge the process with collage, drafting and painting.

This past year both artists moved from St. Louis back to where they were raised and spent time traveling in the U.S. The collaboration was a way for the artists to visually "share stories" from their experiences of moving between various locations. The work finds poetry in the snapshots of old neighborhoods and the fragmented memories from one's travels.

Both artists view collage not only as a technique but a worldview, as Martensen writes, "…memories, dreams and observations overlap and coexist on the same plane -- blurring the distinctions between our natural, social, political and imagined worlds."

To see more of Kelda's work please visit www.keldamartensen.com