CONFLUENCE: 12 COLLABORATIONS WITH TOM LEECH, 2016

​Everything in nature is part of a cycle, and the invitation to this project allowed us to step into one of nature's circular currents. Having collaborated a number of times over the past two decades, Tom and I were familiar with one another's vision, materials and methods. Tom had just completed a series of experimental marbled patterns on his own handmade papers (cotton, abaca and recycled copies of Hamlet), and I proposed to use these "finished" pieces as a starting point for my own visual inquires.

For each of us, water is essential to our work. For Tom, water is the invisible mystery element in papermaking, and the fluid medium from which marbled patterns emerge. For me, the presence of life-sustaining water, or the lack of it in arid land, is always a factor in my work.

With this in mind, I was able to respond to Tom's paper, overprinting them with new and/or existing woodblocks. The organic, cellular, geologic, micro/macro reticulations evoked by the marbling were further sharpened and fixed by the woodcuts. In all cases, new imagery and meaning was born. Nature recycles everything.