The questions are from the art critic who is writing the introduction for our show's catalog.
The answers are from my creative writer/art historian buddy Jeff.
" Thanks Jeff :-)"
How can you describe the way you’ve been influenced, in
your own practice, by your collaboration with another artist? How were you changed, if at all, by interacting with the “world” of someone else—“world” meaning the language, style, and medium of another artist?
your own practice, by your collaboration with another artist? How were you changed, if at all, by interacting with the “world” of someone else—“world” meaning the language, style, and medium of another artist?
It’s been interesting to see how Nalani and I have worked to find commonalities between our respective mediums and processes. With my writing, I’m concerned with the use of vivid, expressive language as a means to creating images---pictures that might give a reader a strong sense of mood and space. Crafting these images takes several drafts; each time I’m revisiting a body of text and removing, rearranging, and marking out lines to create a stronger finished piece. In cases where I’m work shopping a piece and letting several people edit along with me, my work is subject to their influence and suggestion as well; in some sense, the writing becomes collaborative. The same is true of my and Nalani’s process of working visually. Having access to Nalani’s method of building and erasing surfaces has
allowed me to see the relationship between drafting spaces with words and drafting spaces with lines and marks on a two-dimensional surface. When Nalani and I share the creation and realization of a work through the layering and rubbing
away of wax and graphite and ink, it recalls my own process of drafting and redrafting a work of fiction. It’s helped me to visualize the written draft as something almost sculptural or painterly in its potential to be broken down and built back up again.
Do you feel that somehow what you’re doing now is different than you could have done if you worked alone? For example in the choice of subject matter, or your approach to your work? How has your individual process changed as a result of collaboration?
Absolutely. I’ve benefited tremendously from Nalani’s understanding of different
media. I can express an idea about how I might want a thing to look---I might want a
surface to be translucent or smeared or textured---but I’ve depended on Nalani’s fine arts background to help achieve those ends. With respect to approach, working with Nalani has influenced my understanding of how spontaneity and intuition can work to achieve outstanding results both with creative writing and visual arts. The more I’ve written, the more I’ve tended to be more deliberate and measured in my approach to producing drafts. Sometimes I can get mired in rules of form or concentrate too much on what and how I’ve already written. Working with unfamiliar media allowed me the freedom to make accidents or missteps creatively; and some of these unintentional marks eventually turned out to be some of the strongest aspects of the work. I’m interested in how I can take that
kind of unrestrained creativity back to my writing, forgetting rules or precedents and trying to tap a sense of unfamiliarity when entering a story.
In everyday life, collaboration can be a fruitful dialogue between two individuals,or it can turn into an unpleasant game of influence. In your collaboration, do you feel like you’re a part of a team, a duo, or do you feel more like a couple of individuals trying to find a way to build something together without knowing exactly what is going on?Basically, what is your position in this dynamic?
Nalani and I seem to work in a way that is largely intuitive. We both understand the
basic concepts driving our collaboration and let those ideas manifest in ways that aren't always discussed. For instance, if Nalani has made a certain mark across a line of text, I'll look at it and decide that I'd like that mark to behave differently. I'll erase it or draw over it or make it heavier, and there are opportunities afterward for Nalani to do the same. What the both of us are left with are the echoes of a creative dialogue, one that has been sometimes harmonious and other times discordant. As if in a discussion or debate, I feel like the two of us bring our own individual sensibilities to the table, discover ways that those sensibilities relate to one another, and come to a conclusion that is at once ours collectively and rich with evidence of our separate personalities.
Do you anticipate that the final collaborative piece will be a sort of discussion between two sensibilities, or more so a piece made by two hands, with evidence of individual processes? Or even, perhaps, a mix of these two positions—a sort of loving conversation leading the process of creation? How would you describe it?
I think, reiterating my answer above, that the work will manifest my and Nalani's
individual personalities while at the same time looking very much like the product of a single body. It seems to me that when two individuals work together, there eventually has to be some kind of an overlap. Nalani has influenced me considerably. Sometimes we work separately, and in those cases, I’m thinking about what I want to do with the work, what I’m concerned with expressing on the surface of these pages. And when we're together, working in the same space, I find myself still working according to my own ideas, but then I'll also borrow from what I see Nalani doing. With this kind of adoption, the boundaries between what process or idea or product are ‘mine’ and ‘hers’ are obscured. The work begins to speak to larger, more inclusive and essential concerns that belong to both of us.