Above: Three images courtesy photographer John William capturing Maestro Dr. Jonathan Girard and the artist deep in the collaborative process.

In the summer of 2018, Carruthers gathered up 27 selected paintings that would comprise the slippages series and temporarily relocated to Vancouver to work with Dr. Jonathan Girard, Director of Orchestras at the University of British Columbia School of Music and the UBC Symphony Orchestra (UBCSO). Conversations took place between Carruthers and Girard regarding how best to translate the visual into the auditory.

On the Page

Above: Two paintings selected from the 27-page ‘slippages’ graphic score shown with the transparent overlay developed by the Maestro and the artist to transform visual expression into sound.

Carruthers and Girard struck upon an ingenious solution. They created a geography of the orchestra on a sheet of transparent plastic and used it to map over Carruthers’ art works. Dr. Girard recounts: “We created a transparent overlay of the seating chart and went page by page, figuring out which instruments would take responsibility for which parts of the images.”