WOW when then invitation came to participate in this wild romp I was all in feet first (I drew the feet :) If you have no idea was i’m talking about, read on, and check out the list of participating artists and writers. Poster prints of these collaborations and writings will be at the lovely Lewis Gallery, Portland Public Library, through December 31.

PRESS RELEASE

NonSense: Collaboration on Spontaneous Composition revisits the idea of "Exquisite Corpse," created by Dadaist artists in the years after World War I as a playful way to communicate the absurdities of a chaotic time. Those collaborative drawings and writings were whimsical and surreal, with each artist aware only of their contribution of one-third of the overall piece until the unveiling.

With this exhibit, we hope to evoke the illogical, the absurd, and the irrational.  We asked illustrators, editorial artists and writers - whose work appears everywhere from children’s books, to novels, to the pages of newspapers and magazines - to create whatever came to mind when the paper, or digital screen was in front of them. Each artist and writer in the exhibit worked off small fragments of where the previous contributor left off or left small fragments for the next contributor to work from. 

We like to imagine the community created between Dada artists as they sat around tables late into the night merging their ideas on paper. Although we couldn’t invite everybody to share that same kind of physical space, we saw this as an opportunity to create community amongst artists whose work explores this same terrain. 

Participating artists:
Adam Ming, Amanda Petrozzini, Andy Rosen, Anna O’Sullivan, Armando Veve, Barbara Nessim , Calla King-Clements,. Clay Hickson,Daniel Minter, Daphne Knouse, Eamon White, Ellie Foreman-Peck, Emily Mae Smith, Hanson Coleman, Haruka Aoki, Izzie Klingels, Jess Esch, Jordan Kendall Parks, Julia Rothman, Kreh Mellick, Liz Long, Lucky Platt, Marc Rosenthal, Mardie Weldon, Melissa Sweet, Mirka Hokkanen, Nick Morley, Patrick Corrigan, Pilar Nadal, Stephen Burt, Tamara Shopsin, Tony Millionaire, X. Fang

Participating writers:
Allison Paige, Arisa White, Betsy Sholl, Bill Roorbach, Dan Koeppel, Dawn Potter, Debra Spark, Desi Van Til, Georgia Hill
Gibson Fay Leblanc, Greg Kesich, Hannah Joyce, Judy Kaber, Jessica Anthony, Kate Christensen, Lewis Robinson, Maya Williams, Megan Grumbling, Meghan Gillis, Michael Colbert, Mike Bove, Monica Wood, Russel Pearson, Rylan Hynes, Samaa Abdurraqib, Sarah Braunstein, Stuart Kestenbaum