Mags Harries & Thyra Heder | Offshoot Collaborations
Reflecting on their collaboration, a conversation between Mags Harries and Thyra Heder. January 2022
Mags: This is not an easy process to collaborate with one’s offspring.
Thyra: I mean, how does one make art with your mother? When your mother is the artist you have most admired throughout your life? We had distinct art practices, conflicting and busy schedules in separate states, and a global pandemic. It felt nearly impossible to start.
M: At first Thyra and I sent these drawings in the mail to each other
T: And that didn't work. They only started working when we were drawing on other sides of the room in the same studio.
M: Yes, but we stuck to the rules! We only revealed the full image when all four parts were completed. We were struck how our lines were so similar and that it was almost as if we were communicating our intentions to each other. These drawings are totally blind yet they have a cohesion and whimsy to them. We questioned whether it was art but continued anyway.
T: The exquisite corpse game was low risk. In fact the idea that a drawing we created would work at all seemed insane, so we were off the hook completely. We relaxed into trying to make ourselves laugh. We weren’t making “Art” we were simply trying to spend time together in the studio until better things emerged. But there was a surprising synchronicity. We were drawn to similar subjects, patterns, and themes–as if we had an overlapping unconscious.
M: We began fusing objects into each other, a hat with two brims to contain a head looking in opposite directions or garments that join two people. These sculptures began as a conceptual way to connect two people but it is only when we tried to wear them that they took on personal resonance.
T: Yes, by documenting ourselves trying them on without a rehearsal, the introduction of chance added richer meaning to what we were doing. We had designed objects to represent our connection but when we wore them it brought that connection to life- Our arms were attached, we couldn’t see, we both wanted to lead, we cradled each other’s heads to get through neck openings and adjusted collars.
M: They became about care, as we each needed to help each other dress, a dance that could be awkward and tender and very funny.
T: It was, at times, hilarious.
With many of our pieces we learned that our synchronicity could not be planned, and we must develop ways of making alongside each other, rather than force a meaning onto what we were making.
M: We both like the Doing.
T: Ha! Well, you do for sure. I had to relent my need to know the outcome.
M: It must have been hard growing up with me jumping around to lots of different things.
T: It was sometimes. I think I needed to know the plan. But you know I'm the same way now as an adult. If you had asked me about our personalities last year, I might have said we weren't very similar, but this process has revealed a lot of parallels.
M: I think it has happened a lot more organically than I thought. There was so much anxiety around it. To actually do this felt like I wouldn’t be comfortable. You never quite quit being a mother.
T: And I couldn’t quit pushing back.
M: I am not sure we reached a deeper understanding.
T: I think through our various experimentations we've both gotten a sense that our connection might exist deeper than understanding.
Clara & Dedalus Wainwright | Offshoot Collaborations
What Families Talk About
3 years ago, we (Clara & Dedalus) started discussing the possibility of a collaboration. Over the years we had worked together in different ways, but this was to be the first time where we met as equals, rather than one of us contributing to an idea the other had initiated. It took us a few months to settle upon something that felt fruitful and provocative. Inspired by a fantastical family invention (developed in mirthful collaboration with dear friend Pratap Talwar) - The Elder Luge: an amusement park ride on which seniors claim their exit with style and thrill by riding a roller coaster through a ring of fire that cremates them and scatters their ashes over an ocean bay. We saw an overlap in these two stories which both take modern amusements (luxury cruises and roller coasters) and use them as an aesthetic vehicle to laugh through our end-of-life anxieties and imagine an alternate relation to the complexities of mortality.
This amusements-embodying-anxieties idea inspired Clara to propose a gallery exhibit that could include other creative families and when we invited Mags and Thyra to collaborate, they were excited to work in parallel on the project. Early discussions clarified a 4-way interest in the collaboration between generations of a family as the uniting principle. Mags & Thyra felt the Last Supper/Elder Luge idea was a Wainwright project, so we agreed to develop it on our own.
Getting to work in 2020, the two of us met for intensive sessions as often as life allowed. We searched for approaches that could be shaped from both of our creative sensibilities, and had many starts and stops, until we reexamined an old family favorite. At least since Dedalus’ childhood, after dinner drawings of Exquisite Corpses (inspired by the Surrealists) has been a family tradition shared with Bill Wainwright and Dedalus’ sister Caroline (plus any dinner guests). So the two of us started a series of expressive character portraits using the chance based “what came before is a secret until the image is complete” technique. The early portraits from 2020 closely followed the rules while the later portraits used the process for the initial generation of images that could then be re-considered and developed as a complete composition.
Clara brought her exuberant collaged fabric methods and Dedalus introduced paper, charcoal and paint. This range of materials show up in different combinations across the images and introduce questions of unity and division in individual works. We each borrowed methods from the other, enriching the boundaries of possession. Through out the series, we found challenge and inspiration in the juxtapositions of our image making impulses, and are excited to introduce this cast of eccentric characters to the world.
When we turned our efforts to the Elder Luge, the call and response aspect of the Exquisite Corpses was an excellent momentum generator. One of us would create an environment, the other would inhabit it with some counterpoint and then we both could tune it. Over time, we reimagined and reinvented the Elder Luge, which manifests alternately as a roller coaster, a maze or a field of brass horns, with the cremating ring of fire taking the animate form of a dragon embodying its own chance like intentions. In this series, Clara introduced threshold-like fiberglass screen as a background material that expanded the Elder Luge and its existential possibilities.
The process has shown us myriad ways in which we share understandings, and many where we diverge. At times the process has been a struggle, but both of us have found much inspiration and something solid to cultivate together during these crazy times.