Holding Back
Making friends used to be easy. When you are in grade school, you talk to a kid in your class about a game you play, then presto, your friends now. There are no deep commitments, you just want to hang out with this person again. When you are an adult, friendship can feel like work. You meet someone that you might connect with, but having made and lost friends over the years, now you hesitate, feel yourself holding back, you want to make sure this person is worth the investment. Making friends has lost its magic.
17 years ago, Jordan Schwab, attending grad school at the University of Saskatchewan, and Patrick Bulas, the Printmaking technician at the same university, somehow rediscovered that magic. Their relationship grew to include an ongoing artistic collaboration about the history and process of printmaking. In 2020, Jordan moved to Quesnel BC, Patrick remained in Saskatoon. Now they are using printmaking to explore the history of their friendship, to remain connected, and to expand their artistic collaboration.
Their new work delves into the challenges of maintaining connections over time and distance using various printmaking processes and collage to create imagery that binds or separates. Working alone in their home studios, they develop elements of everyday moments that they might have once experienced together, then through mail exchange, zoom calls or annual meet ups, they collaborate to connect the images together, each artist completing the thought of the other.
Animals found in the artist’s home communities, or spots they have visited together, populate the work. Representing a desire to be wild and carefree, unbound by responsibilities and borders, they also at times, stand in for the artists themselves, becoming controlled and confined. These creatures roam throughout their work, along with ladders, trucks, cords, tape, traffic cones, and various other objects that are part of their everyday lives. These elements become both barriers and connection points, the building blocks for the images and their friendship.
The artists, approaching or settling into middle age, have both experienced friendships lost to distance and time. It is easy to be friends when you live and work in the same place. Separated by 1500 kilometers, a mountain range, and endless prairie, staying in touch becomes a daunting challenge.
This work then, like the act of printmaking itself, is less about the images than the process. A continuing testament to two people’s epic expression of friendship.