Collaboration

As an artist, I’ve found myself wanting to collaborate with others. Last year I went to a sticker art show in Houston and met a lot of really cool, down-to-earth folks. A few of us had ‘real training’ and could wield Inkscape or Illustrator like champs, but the rest were average folks scribbling on copies of USPS label 228: the American vandal’s first choice in street art.

Lots of great slaps were made that day, up until blanks ran out. The adults faded off into conversations, departing the venue and concluding their day. The kids, on the other hand, kept trudging forward with whatever was left. Scrawling over others’ creations, remixing the bits and pieces of leftover sticker material. It was pretty cool to witness.

I remain friends with one of the artists and his comrades over the web. We’ve talked about collaborations on sticker packs, but everything seems to fizzle out after the initial back and forth. Locally, my friends have kids now and we can’t party nearly as hard as we used to. Instead, if I visit earlier in the day, I often find myself creating coloring pages in my sketchbook for them to tear out and fill in. It has a hint of that same fearless attitude I saw in Houston. It gives me hope that kids these days won’t be put off by haphazard group projects at school and give up on collaborating and teamwork.

I don’t want to be there when they learn about copyright law.