Playtime

On her blogspot, Sherrie York's two most recent entries show the final stages of her "half" of our collaboration on the library's upcoming (in three weeks!) artist/writer show. OMG, but the woman has further dropped my grateful jaw with her response to my haiku.

Many unexpected and nifty things began happening when Sherrie agreed to join me in this project. Of course, the first thing was her agreeing to work with me, and also her treating this, from the get-go, as seriously, and as worthy of her time and attention, as one of her paying projects. But there's been an aspect of this project, (essentially, again, from the get-go), which has made me very glad I invited her to co-conspire with me.

For whatever the reason, Sherrie began playing, experimenting, attempting this thing, trying that thing. Previously she's done her printmaking by hand, but this library gig seems to have been the tipping point in causing her to finally buy a small ("baby") press. She's bought mica to add to one of the inks as it dried, and tried her hand again at embossing, after many several years. Maybe this experimenting can be blamed on the project's more open-for-interpretation nature. Her previous forays into illustrating text have been, "darn literal."

Further, and what really delights me is, Sherrie says she suspects that much of what she's learned and picked up over the course of bringing this project to fruition will likely arise to serve her in future projects (i.e. her paying gigs).

Hunh, maybe this is what should be meant by, "playing to win."