APE BLEAKNEY
APE MADE
Ape_Bleakney_collabXchange_Jordan_Lee_2023-2024_RCEK1232 72x.JPG

collabXchange

The collabXchange is part collaboration and part artist exchange. An exchange of ideas, knowledge, space and time: working together collaboratively as two artists.

Each collabXchange will be unique: may be project-based, process-based or both. Work takes place with Ape in her Cleveland studio and/or at collaborator's space.

 

Interested in participating in a collabXchange?

Shoot me a message with thoughts on how we could work together. Please also include your preferred duration and any dates that may work for you (currently scheduling into 2025). The collabXchange could be a short, concentrated experience or longer and more spaced out. It is really whatever we make it, so hit me with your ideas! Or if you just want to chat to see if we would be a good fit.

For those not local to Northeast Ohio and coming in for a concentrated collabXchange, there is a private onsite apartment available at reduced weekly rates.

 
 

PAST collabXchanges:

 

2023-2024: Pilot with Jordan Lee

Ongoing. Please check back for more updates.

Jordan and I became friends through the handmade / craft fair circuit some years back. He is a very talented leather worker (Wright and Rede), with a background in photography. He’d recently gotten into cyanotype and is moving himself into the fine art realm. He expressed interest in learning some processes I use, and I asked him to be my partner / guinea pig in this pilot program experiment. So happy he was into it. 

This pilot was made possible in part by an investment of public funds from the Ohio Arts Council (OAC). The OAC is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically.

 

Sharing Knowledge, Process, and Space

Jordan and I each taught the other on our respective mediums: he with cyanotype and me with screen printing.

 
 

Ekphrastic

Back-and-Forths

We did a visual ekphrastic exchange of sorts: Jordan gave me cyanotypes which I then responded to by screen printing onto them.

 
 

Two diptychs (below) from this collaboration were included in Ashland University’s Coburn Gallery CLIMATE Exhibition.

Home to 107 Species (Erie), Cyanotype and Screen Print, 8’’x10’’ Each (Diptych), 2024

Eutrophication (Erie), Cyanotype and Screen Print, 8’’x10’’ Each (Diptych), 2024

 
 

Learning By Heart

We worked through Corita Kent’s ‘Learning By Heart’ workbook together as a way to reinvigorate our ways of seeing and get back to the basics. Love Corita! Master artist and teacher, these exercises are not for the faint of heart. This book also facilitated our larger discussions about creating, breaking out of ruts, celebrating the everyday, slowing down, and living life as an artist.