Collaborations with Poets, Artists, Photographers

So my son, Jonah Peake, had this idea…

…to write a poem every day, beginning in March 2020, right when the coronavirus was making everyone “Stay Safe/Stay Home” and practice physical distancing. He asked me to illustrate some of them, and I offered him a collage of a coffee mug as a possible style. He loved it, and wanted more. A No Staycation collaboration was born!

My poet friend, Gordon Korstange, had this idea…

…to do something more tangible than just go out to lunch once a week and talk. Because I had had a collaborative art-making experience in my recent past, I suggested we trade word and image in a collaborative way. That primitive exchange in 2015 became a multi-year collage-making experience, which eventually led to writing about each collage as if it were an art label on the wall next to the artwork. The “artist” of each collage needed a name, as did the “art curator” describing it, and a place for the art to hang. What evolved was a make-believe town of Happenstance, VT with fictional denizens and their favorite artist, GorMatt StrangePeak, whose work was curated by Jayne Doescent.

And the chance encounter at a fundraising event of a Photographer, Yevette Hendler, resulted in…

…a three hour photo shoot on a sunny October afternoon with me posing for her in nature au natural. Because that went so well, we did a second collaborative session with another model and me posing against a blue backdrop, and a third series, with another model and me, entitled, New England Rustic. See more at https://ytreephotography.com.