Works Well With Others

the collaborative mindset

One of the things I love about making art is that it is primarily a solitary activity. I can’t be in my creative headspace while carrying on a conversation, or often, even listening to music with lyrics. Words mess with my ability to make images. Also, I enjoy the time alone with me, myself and I. At the same time, there are days when I feel isolated and really crave some interaction with other humans.

Enter collaboration, which just may be my Word of the Year.

Last spring, I had a solo show at ACES Gallery in Wilmington and met some local arty people. One of them, a musician, contacted me a few months later and asked if I would be interested in making the artwork for the upcoming release of a song he composed and would be recording.

Would I Ever!

Since I had a taste of collaborating with a poet during my residency in Orquevaux last winter, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to do more of it. In that case, the writer used my visual work as inspiration. This time, I used the lyric and composition as my inspiration for a painting. I’m not going to give more away until the song is released, but here is the painting that it inspired for me.

Who

I loved the freedom I had to interpret the song and present an image that reflected how the music and lyric made me feel. I’m looking forward to the song’s release next month so I can share it with you all.

More recently, I wrote about a new project, Whispers of our Mothers, a collection I am creating for a show in 2025. In that post, I put out a call for others interested in the topic to collaborate with me by contributing materials from their own family histories for me to use in my mixed media pieces. I really am overwhelmed by the response and honored to be sharing in the genealogies, stories and photos of some truly remarkable women. Even though I’m creating the finished pieces, having these resources to work with is both inspiring and humbling. I’ve begun work on several pieces, but it’s far too early to share anything other than this peek into my process. Right now it all looks like scribbles and scraps, but it will come together.

In the past, I’ve not been comfortable collaborating with other visual artists in situations where we both (or all) work on the same piece in the same time and space, but I do find that sharing an idea or vision across disciplines is exciting for me. Musician + writer, poet + painter, musician + dancer, sculptor + writer: so many possibilities!

I have one more upcoming and ongoing venture, scheduled to be released next week. I can’t share more about that yet, except to tell you that I will be collaborating with an author friend of mine to explore the very thing I’ve been talking about here today: interdisciplinary creative processes. I can’t wait for you all to see!

Until then, I hope you are having a great start to 2025 and I thank you for coming along on this creative adventure!