Dear friends -

At its heart, all art is collaborative. The artist creates, and the audience receives, forming a relationship through the imperfect meditation of conversation. Relationship requires participation, communication, and respect. Art, the medium of discourse, is simply a byproduct of this collaboration.

In striving for a non-hierarchical dialogue, the artist must create the conditions for communication through an intentional awareness of context. The creative ecology of the community is significantly impacted by the demographics of history, politics, and education. It is the responsibility of the artist to study the non-commercial economy of their audience if they have a desire to prioritize the collaboration.

“How do artists live?” she asked. “In the trenches,” I replied.

I am a contemporary storyteller and visual linguist, moving through a cyclic practice of participant observation and creative synthesis. Images and information are strategically referential tools in this process of contextualization, revealing the rootless nature of truth, and the impact of perspective. I am intensely interested in the epistemology of artistic creation; the story of the story, so to speak, and how it is told.

People are my chosen medium, and light my chosen tool. As a photographer I employ the camera lens as a conduit, facilitating narration and portraiture. Collage art enables the construction of visual theses, and a reassessment of media nostalgia. With both, I have found that moving away from matted and framed white walls has increased the breadth of both surface and symbol, allowing the space surrounding the art to become as significant as the works themselves.

The documentation of these conversations and interventions have synthesized into event-based collaborative canvases. The objective of these evolving two-dimensional time capsules is to create a participant community while simultaneously producing a tangible artifact in the form of public art. The use of situations, either created or pre-existent, set a contextual base for the work, as well as strengthening the community-building aspects of the project by adding shared memories to the infrastructure of collective consciousness. Collaborative art also provides creative outlets in populations whose education systems have already worked Fine Arts out of the budget, circumnavigating the disparities resulting from our tax-based education system.

By facilitating an individual’s understanding of connection to their community, the artistic process counters depression, anxiety, and societal disconnect. The public develops their critical thinking skills through direct participation in the production and preservation of popular culture, while simultaneously building the confidence needed to question the current media mythology.

Our world is in a liminal state of cultural diaspora, and there are many barriers to clear communication between citizens. Ignorance, while inevitable, is stigmatized, resulting in compartmentalized indifference. The collaborative artistic process allows the public forum to become a classroom for respect and compassion, empowering individuals and invigorating communities. Art is revolution without the war.

The majority of Americans believe that our country is the epitome of freedom, and the rest of the world still longs for our Manifest Destiny. This is the reality the print media portrays, and what the government would like us to believe. But as artists, as individuals, we must learn to decipher our own truth and emphasize cross-border communication that challenges the corporate and governmental information monopoly. Art provides us with the tools needed to question the media machine and raise awareness through counter-propaganda. We have the power to perform cultural plastic surgery and create beauty.

Do not take your task lightly, my friends. There is much at stake.

Art is like making love, he said. Art is love, she replied.

Elisabeth Howland

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