Ashley Sarali
reporter

In the spring, SE Campus visual arts faculty and staff put together a collaborative multimedia project called Traveling Book: Pandemic Collaboration. 

The virtual collaboration is available online and also in person in ESEC’s Art Corridor I starting Oct. 25. A reception will be held from 2-4 p.m. Oct. 27 featuring the artists. 

Penelope Bisbee, SE Campus fine arts coordinator, created this idea when she realized students could not attend an event in person. Bisbee reached out to her colleagues in the art department to see if they would like to collaborate on this. 

“We would meet every three weeks to hand off the book to the next artist,” Bisbee said.

Artists created their own version of a book. There are five separate books. They would start the format of the book and pass it to the next person. Then they would add whatever they wanted to it. Some added text while others added images or 3D pieces.

“We decided not to have any rules!” Bisbee said. “You could do whatever you wanted!”  

While Bisbee’s inspiration came from Tibetan prayer books, SE art associate professor John Phillips’ inspiration came from a lightning storm in Deep Ellum in 1982.

Phillips went out into the street and took pictures of the lightning storm but never printed them until two years ago.

“I digitized the negatives and finally printed them in the form of a handmade book,” Phillips said. “That became my contribution to the collaboration.” 

All the books are different and show the different skills of each artist.  

“If images of a certain place or quote had been added, I would be inspired by those additions, and it influenced my decisions,” said art associate professor Jessica Bates, another artist in the project. 

When Bisbee asked art assistant professor Sharon Covington if she would like to be a part of this,  she said all kinds of potential ideas swirled around in her head.

“My initial reaction was thinking how much fun this collaboration could be,” Covington said. “The end result was a complete surprise, nothing like I ever imagined it would be.”