Collaboration is integral to my creative and research-based studio practice. This approach, which often relies on the input of other designers and artists, allows for widening perspective, connecting with others, and rethinking engagement with my work. This community of collaborators agitates my practice, intercepts my point of view, and often blurs the invisible boundaries between art and design.
Examples of self-initiated participatory projects that have resulted in publications include Touch: Vista Sans Wood Type Project and The Phonografik Collectivo with Ashley John Pigford. Our research on these projects and for the Technographic Workshops has gained international recognition and a project grant from the Center for Craft, Creativity & Design.
Since 2013, I have been collaborating with the artists of Shift-lab on printed and performance-based projects. We have focused on creating interpretations of language and visual narratives, a crossover between methods of researching, mapping, and publishing printed matter and artist books.
In 2015 as a fellow for DesignInquiry, I began a long-term collaborative project, Situated Between, with designer/artist Arzu Ozkal. This work is fueled by post-structuralist discourses and requires constant interpretation, reconstruction, and reexamining. We questioned basic notions of meaning, permanency, and authorship, while creating a temporal platform for creative inquiry, play, while overlapping experimentation. We operated between singular and plural, whispers and noise, wonder and flop, think and re-think ,cross-, inter- and post-disciplinary. We published a series of three volumes that present a range of results from over thirty artists and designers.
As the 2017-18 Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize winner in design at the American Academy of Rome, I initiated prompts on privacy that tap into the perspectives, dialogues, and insights gathered from various members of the creative communities of Rome. In developing a graphic language to convey these themes, and dwell upon the thresholds between public and private, I drew inspiration from the Roman cityscape. A hope for this narrative was to break down the walls between the communities inside and outside of AAR. Evidence from this probing of privacy manifested in an artist book, SLOT, produced in collaboration with Jo Frenken at the Charles Nypels Lab in Maastricht, Netherlands and John Demerritt in Emeryville, California. This project is on exhibition at Colli Independent Gallery in Rome, Italy in June and July 2018.
A digital adaptation of this project was conceived and inspired by ongoing blended conversations at the AAR. It was designed in collaboration with Matt Frizzell. My interest in reading, indexing, and the playfulness of language yields text-based inquiries. My particular aim for pause : dash was for the structure and system to redirect and generate an unfamiliar narrative with contrasting phrases taken out of context.
In 2018-19, I collaborated with Frederic Antonini on Rerun, a series of five books that revolve around the conceptual idea of repetition. The first book was completed in 2019, Petra, as a collaboration with Italian artist Giulia Crispiani.
Scaffolding, a limited edition artist book, zine, and print installation, uncovers a collection of printed grids, patterns and geometric frameworks from our constructed and natural environments. Objects in our typical environments unfold into a familiar, almost invisible backdrop for our lives. Grids of space and time are everywhere, even if we cannot see them on the surface. They create modules and patterns that are easy to follow. They give rhythm under the stillness. This mismatch of grids can be quiet, soft, indifferent. This work was exhibited at Center for Book Arts in New York City and the Singapore Art Book Fair in 2023.
Poster, performed is an evolving critical and artistic study of the use of computer algorithms to impart autonomy in a collaborative creative process. Collaboratively conceived with Arzu Ozkal, the project builds on their Situated Between print series, where active audience participation is key, and it aims to study the use of digital technology, computer algorithms, and experimental print process in creating such works of art. Collaborators include Steve Bowden, Wylie Kasai, and Mark Zurolo. This project will launch at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA as part of Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair in August 2023 and at a pop up venue in London in fall 2023. It was funded by an Art Integration Grant from the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College.
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Research has been presented at various venues including ATypI (Barcelona and Hong Kong), the Center for Book Arts (New York), NC State College of Design, San Francisco Public Library, SOTA (Society of Typographic Aficionados) national conferences, Tasmeem at VCU Doha, the Type Directors Club, TYPO Berlin, and Virginia Commonwealth University.
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Tricia Treacy was raised in an Irish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has lived in three counties in the Philadelphia region, the Appalachian Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, and the outskirts of northern Tokyo. As an educator of art and design for over twenty years working at Appalachian State University, The University of the Arts, University of Delaware, University of Pennsylvania, she is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of Studio Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.