Before I left for Japan my ArtLink artist Frank and I bound a book of digital images we had been working on.  We also bound a blank book in the Japanese style of stab binding.  This is a neat method of sewing a stack of paper together and Frank got the hang of it quickly.  “Fill it up while I’m in Japan, ” I told him, but doubted that he would get to it.  He’s been preoccupied with a lot of things since January when started to work together. Most of our time together had been spent talking about the incredible events in Frank’s life and building a relationship, but there hasn’t been much artistic focus.

This, my third match in the ArtLink program, has been the most difficult that way.  Grace Anne who dreamed up this great idea of pairing artists one on one to work together has left it to the teams to determine what collaboration means.  Frank and I are still exploring the meaning as the show opening looms.

I am wary of bringing too much of my own agenda to the table and have let the artists I work with lead the way. This is how I work with all Creative Clay member-artists and my students at the Handweaving Museum and Craft School in Clayton New York that I teach at in the summer.

In Japan I saw ArtLink teams paired for up to three years at a time who were producing impressive and very edgy conceptual art.  The “more well known artists” as the Japanese call the professionals in the pairings have varying degrees of influence.  But Japan is a society that thrives on collaboration and this probably explains why the ArtLink program has taken off so well there. 

Back home I called Frank.  He told me he’d read the blog every day.  He sounded upbeat and we planned to meet so we could make some final decisions on what we were going to show in June.  In the back of my mind I’d been thinking of some kind of freestanding sculpture of some sort with our digital images, but before bringing that up I would ask Frank if he had any ideas.

After I gave Frank the presents I brought for him from Japan he smiled as wide as I’d ever seen him.  “I got something for you Miz Sarah,” he said and gave me the notebook we bound.  He had filled it with his beautiful and poetic ideas of life and tiny cartoon illustrations.  It was amazing.  Rising from the ashes of displacement from Cuba, Columbia, and finally from New Orleans, Frank had chosen a phoenix as a symbol of his life philosophy.  The last three pages were the words “thank you” translated into as many languages as Frank could find.

“What do you think of making something that is standing by itself, Miz Sarah?”  Frank asks about our piece for the show.  I nod, smile, and think maybe the ArtLink magic has happened again.