Artistic collaborations can often be tenuous arrangements, especially when the traditional expectation or practice of the artist is to create alone. However, as Cheryl Gross and Marta Wapiennek, the artists behind Freak Show have shown, collaboration can spark artistic growth and works of vision and depth.

Gross, an artist and professor from Brooklyn, NY, and Wapiennik, an artist who recently graduated from the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, Cracow, Poland, found each other via the internet. A combination of each artist’s medium, illustration and photography, the resulting book, Freak Show, takes its name from the sideshows that were common practice at circus performances in Gross’ childhood.

Later, the memory of these performances provided a visual language for exploring social decay. Gross recalls, “The first time I attended the circus, I ventured into the sideshow tent. There was a deformed clown doing somersaults in front of this pretty little girl. She was laughing. I, in turn, did not find this funny but sad on many levels.”

In Freak Show, Gross’ carnivalesque and often humorous illustrations appear as graffiti or surreal spirits rising out of Wapiennik’s photographs—familiar images of urban blight: crumbling walls, sidewalks, and littered shores. This tension between the layers of Gross and Wapiennik’s lends to a visually stimulating work:

Portraying the decline of a well-intended, imaginary society, Freak Show, finally, is a satire of what Gross describes as “our present situation concerning globalization and gentrification.” But it is also, as Wapiennik says, a “catalogue of our collaboration.” While in the past, Gross has worked with different artists, including the poet Nicelle Davis, it was Wapiennik’s first time reaching out to another artist: “after graduation, I needed to be in touch with another creative person…I preferred to work with a foreigner, it’s important to exchange ideas and stay open. I just don’t see it in my area.”

It was Gross who initially contacted Wapiennik, after admiring some of her photographs on about.me. Wapiennik sent her a photograph and within the same day, Gross had already created the first layered image of Freak Show. Gross says, “I think if one wants to collaborate and be successful, it needs to be easy.”

Despite the distance between them, both Gross and Wapiennik immediately fell into a rhythm. Wapiennik provided texture—background images from her hometown and trips abroad. Gross superimposed illustrations from her previous books and installations The Z Factor and Greetings from Karpland on top. Wapiennik’s photographs, Gross believes, enhance her work by giving it a sense of time and emphasizing their mutual focus on the beauty and verve of a disappearing society.

For Wapiennik, the collaboration served as artistic support, fruitful beyond the project at hand: “I felt free and inspired knowing that someone was waiting for my work. I also believed in myself more.” While Gross and Wapiennik don’t have a second project officially in the works, the doors are still open. They are currently shopping Freak Show in competitions and publications in the effort to find a home for their alternative universe. View Freak Show online here at issuu.

Copyright 2016 Woven Tale Press LLC. All Rights Reserved.