My practice inhabits the Venn overlaps of art, design and craft, using traditional and contemporary technologies to tease out connections between art practice and writing practice. My research project involves active collaboration with four poets to make works on paper (and sometimes off paper). Each poet has their own distinct methodology which I endeavour to engage with in a bespoke manner as both artist and designer. I teach book arts and graphic design both materially and theoretically across two institutions; I have found that my work with poets and their interaction with my material processes enriches and enhances my teaching methods.
This paper presents a case study of one of the collaborative projects. I worked together with poet Melinda Smith on a site-specific residency project in 2014 within the Museum of Australian Democracy in Old Parliament House, Canberra. We wanted to test how our respective working methods could combine, and aimed to engage a broad spectrum audience with a poetic situation. That project is now moving/growing into/through two other publishing artifacts: a chapbook (for a poetry audience) and an artists’ book (for a visual arts audience). Some of the techniques that we explored together within the project’s development may provide new affordances for visual art, design and writing education and practice.