Leave your mark is not just a motto forKaren M & Anthony C, it’s a manifesto.  Collaborating on every aspect of their art production, the artists have committed to giving each other equal credit for the end result whether it’s for an art gallery installation, guerilla style public art or social networking.  The team holds regular business meetings to strategize projects including paintings, stencils, street art, photography and writing with a tenet of always remaining positive.  By acting as business people they are able to self criticize, edit and produce art they both believe in without being negative; they are not super-critical of each other but of the final work.  Using only their last initials tempers the individual ego and focuses attention on the business of making art.

A meeting may be about a single image, weighing pros and cons of the relevance of the image, how it will read, if it fits with their esthetic and the response curators, collectors and the public will experience.  Once an idea is winnowed down, a drawing is made, the stencil hand cut and the process of producing multiples begins.  Canvasses or cardboard are stenciled, often the paint drippy and careless like a graffiti tagger doing a hit and run.  The team believes in Banksy’s idea that “The Holy Grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look.”

Combining high and low elements, styles, materials and concepts their art begins with the drawing for the stencil, this decision-making process melds pop culture, Dada, tramp art, graffiti, art brute, TV, news, music and celebrity into stripped down images which resonate with contemporary tastes.  Using ready-made canvasses which can be arrayed en masse in a gallery or collecting found objects like cardboard or no parking signs from the street to paint on is like Marcel Duchamp and his wife collecting bricks on their walks through Philadelphia for his famous installation Etant donnés at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Skilled drawing mixed with lowly materials like spray paint and cardboard strips away distractions allowing a unique narrative to emerge from their collaborations that is recognizable as their own style.  The stencils can be reused but each painting is unique, layering images with paint, connecting interstitial information, proximity and memes into a sensory design that rings true, authentic and exciting.  Always striving for excellence, they work hard all the time with projects either on view, in production or in analytical idea mode.

Self promotion is central to the team’s plan, they recently developed a website,  http://www.anthonycandkarenm.com, but have long maintained a MySpace page with over 900 images which vibes better with their indie style – more like a punk rock band than a studio artist.  Ray Johnson-like mail art post cards are sent to lucky friends and cardboard paintings are carefully stapled to street posts so people can appropriate art from the street for their own collection with minimal damage.  The artist team of Karen M & Anthony C are tireless volunteers in the art community, forging relationships with older generations, mingling with different classes of society and divergent viewpoints, they see it as a win/win situation where they earn respect and keep folks on message, too.

Anthony C. and Karen M. have work currently on view at Pageant Soloveev Gallery, 607 Bainbridge Street, Philadelphia, 19147, Roger Lapelle Gallery, 122 Borth 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19125, and Art Space, Lansdowne, 25 South Lansdowne Avenue, Lansdowne, PA, 19050.

Panoramic shot of Anthony C and Karen M’s studio in Philadelphia, PA.

Anthony C. and Karen M. studio in Philadelphia PA

Read more about Anthony C and Karen M on Side Arts art blog

DoN Brewer,  Contributing Writer, Side Arts

Photos by DoN Brewer.