ARTIST STATEMENT

ROUND TABLE [COLLABORATION] projects are leaderless collaborations. Each collaborator operates independently, in a sequence, contributing according to their own judgement.

The sequence is ‘circular.’ A collaborator who works first, works last, and is called a Principal Author. The other collaborators are Contributing Authors.

For Check It Out, participants could start a collage or check out a collage-in-progress “library-style” for up to three weeks. Each collage had five rounds — the Principal Author started a new collage, followed by additions (or subtractions) from three different Contributing Authors before the collage was returned to the Principal Author to complete.

As the initial installation in BAC’s Lobby Project series, Check It Out featured finished collages from the first seven years of RTC’s Postal Collage Project hung floor to ceiling throughout the lobby. Visitors were encouraged to browse behind the gallery front desk and throughout the lobby for inspiration for their own collages.

Similar to the library version of collaborative collage-making, the Postal Collage Project is an ongoing project of RTC that invites strangers from around the world to collaborate on collages in stages through the mail. Individuals are assigned to cohorts that trade collages round-robin style on a set schedule.