WES BRYANT Photo Editor "Wood, Rock, Water," by Thomas J. Norulak and Jan C. Snow [Click to enlarge]

WES BRYANT Photo Editor "The Game Plan," by Barbro W. Evans and Earl W. Evans [Click to enlarge]

Collaboration is a tricky thing. Sometimes when artists work together they get great results. For example: the joint efforts of the New York School poets and the Abstract Expressionists. But, collaboration often has the potential for disaster — another example: Donny and Marie Osmond.

At the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, we find “Collaborations: Double Vision,” the fruits of a more local partnership of members of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Print Group.

Each piece in this exhibition is so varied in intent and style from its fellows that it’s impossible to lump the bad and good together to come up with an average score. But in “Collaborations,” artists manage to work together to highlight their weaknesses and their strengths, resulting in some truly moving pieces.

This is certainly true of “To Forget the Extermination,” a hand-bound book with original etchings reflecting on the Holocaust. Artists Leonard Leibowitz and Barbara Broff Goldman pair drawings in which lines swirl into each other and people’s bodies are host to many lost faces, with simple and powerful statements like “Never again.”

The pages are thick and hard to turn, especially as the weight of the pictures begins to sink in, and after the entire book has been examined it’s almost a shock to look up and see the art gallery surroundings.

Words and art are not mixed so successfully in a work by a trio of artists, Lauren and Sharon Wilcox and Tom Norulak, in their piece, “I Am the One Who Cannot Be Controlled.” While the etching and the screen printing have been well done — the images of faces, teeth and trees of different colors literally meld together — the poem that covers this background is such a trite statement of independence that it overwhelms the original perspective of the visual element.

Sharon Wilcox’s skill is better served in her other collaboration with Barbara Broff Goldman, “Constant Everchanging.” Two ceramic models of man and woman become mosaics of letters, mirrors, light and shadow and symbolism (the man sports the ever-popular serpent-phallus). Sectioned off like puzzles, a few stray pieces fly toward one another, and on the right foot of each person the artists lead you with an idea’s beginning: “If Man,” “If Woman.”

Perhaps the most interesting piece at the show is “The Game Plan,” done by Barbro W. Evans and Earl W. Evans. Sporting three oversized game pieces and the boards they might be played on, the artists convey the progression of technology — from the wooden piece with pencil ends, to the chrome-colored coldness of a more modern piece, to a plastic- and coil-entwined piece whose functionality seems questionable.

Similarly, while the first board is a crude etching of the game piece, and the second shows the game piece covering the globe, the third board is black and white chaos, as lines run together in confusion.

You could say that an artist’s greatest challenge is getting her vision from her mind to the medium — quite a task for one person. Just imagine how satisfying it must be when two artists (like the Evanses) manage to produce their vision together, with results pleasing not just themselves, but countless lucky gallery-goers.

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