Letting Go and Letting Beauty Grow Through Collaboration

Until this year, I had never collaborated with another artist on a piece of artwork or a body of work. To be honest, the concept kind of terrified me. Letting go of a part of the process and relinquishing control to someone else is totally in my nature (she says tongue-in-cheek, those who know me well just lol'd right out of their chairs).

It wasn't until Ashley Joon and I were displaying our work side by side at an event back in February of this year, when I think we simultaneously tilted our heads, and thought... "oh wait... look at that... what if...."

Her rich, simply abstracted florals looked so damn good next to my pottery. The two surfaces seemed to just be pulling towards each other. And so our collaboration was born. The first run of collaborative pieces was small and experimental. After all, neither of us had done this before. Painting with underglaze in her signature style was completely new to Ashley, and allowing someone else to decorated the pieces I had made was completely new to me! I think we were both tentatively anxious but excited, in the way that precipitates most good-but-scary things in life. 

That was back in the spring, and we rolled out that small collaborative body of work at a show we did together in Denver in early June. We had absolutely no idea what to expect, but with great joy those few plates, platters, bowls and mugs flew off the shelves.

The public response was truly overwhelming! We have received many requests for more collaborative items since. So we have done it again, this time with less fear or hesitation and with excitement to see where collaborating would take the creative work we were were both bringing to the table. The result of this collaboration is 17 stunningly painted mugs, two large serving bowls, and several mod oval platters and cafe trays, all meticulously painted by my dear friend and incredibly talented fine-art painter/muralist Ashley Joon! To learn more about her work, please visit her website here, or check her out on Instagram. This collection will release on Wednesday September 11 at 6:30pm MST. Sign up to be an AWK Clubhouse HERE to see a preview of the items that will be available on Wednesday and to receive a $10 flat rate shipping code, which will exclusively be available to Clubhouse members!