Colorful characters
Get Your crayons ready! Peer's Renee Garner wants to collaborate with you
By Leah DeVun
Published: December 3rd, 2008 | 8:55am
The Peer coloring book is the brainchild of Renee Garner, an illustrator and entrepreneur, who asked 25 of her favorite artists to contribute self-portraits to a limited edition book. The drawings — including standout efforts by Justin Richel, Danna Ray, and Kelly Lynn Jones — are printed on archival paper and designed so that they can be easily removed from the book for framing. But Garner wants the project to encompass more than just the creativity of the participating artists, and she wants the book to be more than just an object to buy and sell.
Inspired by the connectivity of zine culture and online social networks, Garner envisions Peer as not only an art project but also a means to create community. She is inviting buyers to collaborate with the artists by coloring in the images and uploading the final versions to a Flickr page, and hopes this will prompt people to get in touch with their inner artists.
But will buyers be willing to put their mark on such lovely prints? “All of the artists participating in this are saying, ‘Hey, you’re an artist who has just as much of a right to contribute to this as we do,’” Garner says. She views the book as an opportunity for messy collaboration, not untouchable artwork that could be devalued by crayons and markers. “Obviously, I can’t force somebody to color it in if they don’t want to,” she says, laughing. “I can just encourage them to be an artist for a day if that’s what they choose to be.”
Along with her husband, Charlie Lybrand, Garner runs the Charlotte, North Carolina-based design business Wolfie and the Sneak (named after their pet dog and cat), which sells calendars, posters, and other printed wares through an Etsy store. While Garner is happy to make money from her work, her desire to create a global community of artists trumps her commercial concerns. “People seem to want to know how to use the Internet to make money,” she says, “and I don’t think that’s what it should be about. It should be about making yourself, and spreading your voice to the world and letting everybody hear it.”
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Check out a video of Renee Garner at work on YouTube.
Peer can be purchased here.
Issue #35
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