Book 7  Beyond Face-book. Meijer, M and Penn, C. (2008) (Fig.5).   Beyond Face-book.  Unique collaborative artist’s book, 36 pages, Fabriano Paper, Water Color, ink/Paint, White Marker, Text, Sewing, 40cm x 30cm.   Book 7.    Collection: Marianne Meijer.

Beyond Facebook was a collaborative work between Marianne Meijer and myself.  Meijer is an artist and art writer who lives in Durban.  When Meijer and I agreed to work together, she was working on death masks and I was playing with the concept of metamorphosis.  The paintings she first gave me to work with were copies of death masks. However as time progressed the new works had nothing to do with death.

She also stipulated that she wanted me to write over the work, as in her view my hand writing is apparently stylish, although illegible.  The pages I was presented with were filled by an image in the middle of the page, so it was quite difficult to know what to do.  I  lightly superimposed a transparent image over hers so that the juxtaposition of two faces, done by two different artists, in two different ways, spoke of two different thought processes and ways of working.

I researched historical quotes on death (the initial context of the work) and wrote these over the finished paintings.  For example I used “Death must be beautiful” from  Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) and Shakespeare (1564 -1616) , “Do not mourn me when I am gone”.  These were written on the left hand side pages.  As I got more drawings from Meijer, which had less and less to do with death, the nature of the book changed although the concept of ‘being bound’ was how I ended my intervention.  She decided that the last two images I reworked should become the first two images of the book.