On Collaboration and Working Together

Licensed under CC-BY by the Coda Museum

You know how you come into possession of some obscure object and suddenly see it everywhere? A silver Subaru… a magenta e-bike! 

Since working in collaboration on the Waterline project, I’ve been doing just that. Seeing references seemingly everywhere to… Collaborations!  The whole experience has inspired and motivated me to co-ordinate a future issue of American Tapestry Alliance’s Tapestry Topics: “Collaborations: Working Together.”

I’m known to get somewhat carried away with research. And that’s exactly what happened when I did a google search for “Collaborations in Art”.  I found many articles and read about many artists working together. I thought I’d share a few of them here.

In the larger art world, collaborations can take many forms. They can be a result of the apprenticeship model, partners in life creating works in synchrony, musicians composing together, even one artist photographing another involves working together. The list goes on.

Not all collaborations are equal, though. In my mind, those that involve mutual respect tend to be the most successful.

As with Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

“The decision to use only the name Christo was made deliberately when we were young because it is difficult for one artist to get established and we wanted to put all the chances on our side…It is not only one person's work, it's really a partnership and collaboration during all these years…”

-Christo

I so remember the 70’s and the excitement over their early wrappings followed by that orange Valley Curtain. That scale!

If you google Collaborations in Art you’ll find any number of examples. The photograph of Picasso drawing a Centaur by Gion Mili is sure to turn up - and one of my favorites.

New to me were performance artists Marina Abrimovic and Ulay. They were so captivating it almost haunts me.  Watch this incredibly beautiful interview with the two of them. It says it all.

Bernd and Hilla Becher were also new to me. I suppose it was my background in photography that drew me to them. They each photographed the same objects - Industrial structures like water towers and gas tanks, presenting the multiple images in a grid format.

“By placing several cooling towers side by side something happened, something like tonal music; you don’t see what makes the objects different until you bring them together, so subtle are their differences.”

-Hilla Becher obituary, the Guardian

And lastly, in the midst of all this research, I’d been discussing my finds with my husband - who then sent me a link to a review of a beautiful film, “Souvenir”, in the New Yorker. Do watch it; it’s only 14 minutes. 

And then watch the video on the making of “Souvenir”. 

It’s fascinating and inspiring! Watch how three people put together all the connecting pieces (by hand!) to create this beautiful stop-action film.

Back to our smaller tapestry world, we have projects like  Waterline and the Timelines tapestries. Installation pieces such as Line Dufour’s ”Fate, Destiny, and Self-Determination: an International Tapestry Project”  and Doris Florig’s “Save the Reef” and “The Ponderosa Project: Weaving the Mother Tree” installations also come to mind.

Have you worked together on a collaborative project? Or know of one I should look into?

Please share! I’m soliciting articles for the Tapestry Topics issue.