Prickly Pear Bloom

word•play [wurd-pley] -noun

1. a creative collaboration
2. multi-media interpretation
3. taking inspiration from a single word
4. a new word every six weeks
5. words provided by artists, writers, friends

Ah, anticipation. I’ve been itching to share this for awhile.

Building off of the collaboration that Erin and I began in February – we called it “outside inspiration” at the time - we’ll be continuing and expanding the project. With a twist. The notion is still inspiration from the outside in the form of a single word, but some things have changed.

The new project, Wordplay, begins today, April 1, when Emily will join us in this creative collaboration. Every six weeks, from the beginning of April until the end of October, we’ll be receiving a single word from an artist or a writer or a friend. And then we’ll have six weeks to interpret that word creatively using any media we choose. One word, three interpretations, every six weeks.

We’ll be relying on our friends to deliver our inspiration, in the form of the words they choose for us. We’ll be relying on our own creative impulses for the interpretation – the “play” part. And we’ll be relying on each other for the collaboration, the momentum, the reinforcement, and the partnership along the way.

We asked Shari to help us out by giving us our first word inspiration, and she graciously accepted, and mailed each of us the word she chose. In the mail. Yes! I love mail. Thanks Shari! We all agreed not to open the letter until today, and man that was so hard. I only just pulled the letter out of my mailbox yesterday, and it was still so hard to wait until today. I actually opened it first thing this morning, before I even had any coffee.

So our first jumping off point is “gossamer.” Wow. Loaded with possibility, isn’t it? I love the pink paint chip. Love it. And so funny, since this past weekend I gocco printed up a few little tokens on paint chips. Cool how things come around.

In six weeks, we plan to reveal how we’ve each interpreted this word, and present the next word in Wordplay. We’ve set up a Flickr group so that you can check out our progress and sneak peeks along the way, as well as our finished exercises. That Wordplay logo on the sidebar goes there too.

I am so excited about this collaboration. So excited. Jumping out of my skin excited. I have such admiration and respect for these two ladies, and their creativity, and I feel so honored to be a part of this with them. I love that we all have different skills, and ways of viewing the world, and that makes this collaboration so intriguing. To see the differences, and sometimes the similarities, that form when three people interpret the same starting point. I am enamored, too, with the creative process, how people work, how to work out problems, and interpret. I really hope that you enjoy our project! I think it’s going to be a pretty fun trip.