Meeting in the middle

Meeting in the Middle is a collaborative project between Tamar MacLellan and Philippa Wood. This project was borne from the chance discovery of an 88 mile walk called the Jurassic Way which traces a limestone ridge linking the two historic market towns of Banbury and Stamford – the home towns of MacLellan and Wood respectively. The collaboration explored not only the physical journey that enabled the two artists to meet in the middle, but investigated the potential of collaborative pedagogy and the impact that this had on individual practice. Taking a 44 mile section each, MacLellan working from the southern point to the middle, and Wood from the north, they researched the 18 villages that comprised their respective sections. A blog was used to record their findings and communicate ideas. The eventual project focus became the village’s social history, which in turn developed into a study of a particular individual (ordinary people of the past) – to represent each location.The final artists’ book is a series of 36 postcards that are sewn and contained within wooden covers (a reference to the wooden signposting of the Jurassic Way). The book uses found imagery, collage, letterpress, lino, screen-printing, foiling, free stitching and various other techniques to represent each ‘portrait’. The story of each person is re-told on the reverse.