Guest post: Collaboration in art and crafts - part 3

Note: If you would like to guest post @ ArtMind please contact me (mitsy@artmind.eu) and I'll send you the 'how-to-blog@ArtMind' -info.

by Shauna Busto Gilligan and Annemiek Hamelink

Part 3 of 3 (read part 1 here and part 2 here)

Shauna and Annemiek got together in Ireland to define the details of their collaboration with as few restrictions as possible so as not to impose on the needed freedom.

As they had both arrived at the same idea – a bowl should inspire a story which in turn should be the source of inspiration for another bowl – the need for inspirational freedom was decided easily.

Shauna is to start with a story and Annemiek with a bowl. They will both work on their stories/ bowls for about a year, updating progress, issues, inspirations in a blog dedicated to the project.

What remained to be decided upon was a topic. Again, this had to be open as previous experience had shown that if this was too restrictive, it would block the inspiration and thus render the project impossible to do.

It happened (unusual for an Irish autumn!) that the weather was great when Annemiek was in Ireland. They decided to take a break from the blogging and took Shauna's children to the Botanic Gardens in Dublin where a temporary sculpture exhibition was on.

Interestingly the exhibition was called Sculpture In Context. It was during this wonderful autumn day when Annemiek took photographs and Shauna wrote in her notebook that they both realised that engaging in other types of art can lead to a feeling of freedom in ones own craft.

They decided to start from here:

We hope we inspired you to collaborate too;

Please feel free to follow our adventure on our blog dedicated to this project.

Guestpost: Similarties in collaborations

Note: If you would like to guest post @ ArtMind please contact me (mitsy@artmind.eu) and I'll send you the 'how-to-blog@ArtMind' -info.

by Shauna Busto Gilligan and Annemiek Hamelink

Part 2 of 3 (read part 1 here)

Shauna, the writer

After my initial collaboration with Annemiek, I presented a paper at Great Writing Conference 2010 (an international creative writing conference held at a UK university every year) with screen writer Karen Lee Street. We examined the creative processes Annemiek uses in jewellery making and analysised Karen’s collaboration with the painter Sam Street:

Karen and I found that while the outcomes and materials used differ hugely, the creative processes involved in creating jewellery/stories, art/stories have a lot in common – all rely on natural inspiration in order to create. Karen and Sam’s collaborations and inspirations echoed the “accidental” collaboration which myself and Annemiek had naturally experienced earlier. The academic research was an interesting way for me to then reflect on my collaboration with Annemiek.

After the initial story/bowl collaboration (see part 1) we attempted to collaborate using themes.

Based on my story “Lucky Horseshoe” we went with the idea of lucky numbers. Interestingly, neither of us were inspired by this to actually create. We talked via email about it, but still, nothing came of it. So, we decided to meet in person to talk about our collaborations. We both felt that meeting face to face would allow more freedom and movement to come into the collaboration.

Expression of Freedom
photograph by Astur Photograpy

Our previous “accidental” collaboration had followed the “process” of allowing creative freedom to work its way into a shape of its own. As we talked, we realised that we both felt the same - inspiration for both writing and craft was what led to the creation of something. So, the stories and the bowls, the products, will form the “plan” rather than a logical plan of “action”, we’re following now a plan led by the outcomes.

I’m currently working on a story based on one of Annemiek’s story bowls and we’re hoping that Annemiek in turn will be inspired by my story to create another bowl. In this way our collaboration is an evolving, cyclical process where image and word are assigned equal importance. The end results are tangible, measurable and indeed, for sale.

Every bowl, as they say, tells a story....

Annemiek, the crafter

As both Shauna and myself had left our desk jobs to create, very soon we both formed the idea to do something together, but as Shauna describes the initial idea of lucky numbers was too restricting and did not lead to anything. It was only when we let go that it started to work. And I guess that is part of the creative process, the freedom, the letting go.

I do like that way of working very much. Let a story, a line, the material speak to me and so create something new, very intuitive, nothing complicated. I do like the idea of a bowl leading to a story and leading to another completely new and different story. Thus the whole of bowls and stories form a never ending story and becomes part of the natural flow, thus reflecting the original inspiration of nature itself.

Even before I knew I would be creating story bowls and before I knew would be collaborating with Shauna, I had this logo designed for my company Two Trees which I wanted to be so that it would remind one of the circle of life too. Amazing how things always come together :-)

So how about you, do you get into a collaboration with other creative minds and if so how does it work for you? We would love to hear your comments.

Guest post: Collaboration in art and crafts

Note: If you would like to guest post @ ArtMind please contact me (mitsy@artmind.eu) and I'll send you the 'how-to-blog@ArtMind' -info.

by Shauna Busto Gilligan and Annemiek Hamelink Part 1 of 3

Annemiek and Shauna met each other in Ireland over ten years ago. At the time they both worked in desk jobs. Since then Shauna has returned to writing and Annemiek felt the urge to create with her hands and found clay, glass and silver very satisfying. Similarly, Shauna's husband Xuan left the corporate world to return to his first career as a photographer. Photographs which Xuan took formed the basis of the inspiration for some short stories, they produced a book together and sent Annemiek a copy as a present. She read the stories and some inspired her. Xuan's pictures bear no relation to the creations Annemiek made in any way, but Shauna's writing brings the two creative outputs together.

In this series of blogs we track how Shauna as a writer and Annemiek as a crafter have found the "accidental" collaboration of photograph-story-bowl in terms of artistic process and tangible outcomes. Currently we are using this experience to formalise further collaboration using Annemiek's "story bowls" as the starting point.

Step 1: Photograph to Story – Shauna, the writer
Xuan’s took the photograph of the lighthouse (above) at an open day run by the Irish Landmark Trust which gave open access to the public. As a writer, I found myself interested in what was within the lighthouse while Xuan as a photographer, looked outward beyond the lighthouse. It was the domestic details which captured me like the a chair or a towel on a rail. The idea of a winding road, seen as disjointed vertical lines in the photograph led me to thoughts of journeys and why one makes these journeys. It was the going away from something that made me create a character who is seated on the chair in the photograph, anticipating the journey her man is going to make in his new car, waiting to glimpse the shine of the metal in the sun – like the lucky horseshoe on the car – at a distance on the winding road. Read the story.

Step 2: Story to Bowl – Annemiek, the crafter
Reading the story I got clear images and flashbacks in my mind, the winding roads and the rolling hills of Ireland. I did not know the picture was taken in Ireland. Some stories will not have the same film-like effect on ones mind and the images stay kind of blurry, but this came through clear. I could see the man in a shiny open sports car with long wavy hair flowing in the wind while driving; the winding road, the wife looking out for him. The scenery something like this:

Now to capture this in a bowl I had to boil it down to the essentials for me, so I kept it in my head and let it mature. What came out was the lone oldtimer-type sports car in typical red on a winding road. I choose the dark clay as it feels right, if I had choosen crisp white porcelain, the feel would be different entirely.

Conclusions: Shauna’s thoughts on the tangible creation
It was interesting for me to see what image Annemiek had picked to hone in on when she created the bowl. While the car was indeed one of the main images in the story, it was more of the texture of the car, silver, reflection of the metal off the sun that was the strongest for me. The change in colour from silver to red was interesting but in practial terms works much better on the dark clay than a silver one would have worked. Annemiek had picked up on the notion of speed and movement in the story and what better image than a red sports car to portray that.

In this “accidental” collaboration the end product is something which can be used. I now use Annemiek’s bowl with the red car in it to keep silver paperclips which hold drafts of my stories together....