Collaboration with Milwaukee-based artist Stephanie Barenz.

This body of work is a collaboration between the artists Stephanie Barenz and
Kelda Martensen. Each artist started five panels and then sent them through
the mail to be completed by the other. They both attended Washington
University in St. Louis for graduate school, which is where they met and formed a
friendship.

During their time at graduate school they discovered that their work had several
conceptual and formal elements in common. These included the themes of
journeying, shifting definitions of home, and the relationship one has to their
neighborhood. Both also have strong backgrounds in printmaking that merge the
process with collage, drafting and painting.

In 2009, both artists moved from St. Louis back to where they were raised
and spent time traveling in the U.S. The collaboration was a way for the artists
to visually "share stories" from their experiences of moving between various
locations. The work finds poetry in the snapshots of old neighborhoods and the
fragmented memories from one's travels.

Both artists view collage not only as a technique but a worldview, as Martensen
*writes, "…memories, dreams and observations overlap and coexist on the
same plane -- blurring the distinctions between our natural, social, political and
imagined worlds."