The exchange that didn't happen & comparing notes
What emerged when two creatives compared notes on a collaboration that missed its very first deadline
This week’s Sunday Pocket Note is a follow on from last week’s reflections on an unfolding trans-Atlantic creative collaboration. It starts with the question:
What happens when a creative collaboration misses its deadline?
A valid and default reaction would be to have the immediate thought: “Oops! Life got busy and other priorities took over” and then worry over it.
Yet when fellow creative Pam Vale (my Guest Author) and I found ourselves in exactly that situation, neither of us were prepared to let the whole idea drop. Here’s what happened instead… grab a cuppa and settle in.
Some backstory …
I noticed that the most interesting part of the project so far wasn’t what hadn’t happened but what had.
Our collab began with the idea to do an art exchange but it has gradually become an exchange of observations, at least as it stands now, in these early days. We’d planned to gather small pieces from our respective creative lives, send them across the Atlantic, perhaps use the sent items in our own art and reflect on the experience. Instead, the original deadline came and went without either of us posting our packages.
Rather than abandoning the project, we became curious about what had happened. Pam had the idea that we should each write a personal reflection and shar our thoughts. We did and as we compared notes, I noticed that the most interesting part of the project so far wasn’t what hadn’t happened but what had.
Disruption and assumptions
Something was bugging me about what had happened. One of the ideas I return to again and again through my photography, personal mapping and workshops is disruption - as an interruption to familiar ways of seeing, being and doing.
This experience disrupted something I hadn’t realised I was consciously paying homage to. Assumptions.
The assumptions that:
creative practice happens during dedicated creative time, in perfect conditions
progress is always visible and tangible
if nothing tangible has been produced, nothing meaningful has happened
What’s curious is that none of these assumptions actually reflect my lived experience of creativity. Most of my creative life happens in snatched moments. It happens while moodling, collecting, mulling things over, making unexpected connections and paying attention to details that others might overlook. Pam arrived at a similar observation from a different angle when she wrote:
“Free time doesn’t magically appear. The craft fairy is not going to wave her wand and grant you hours of blissful uninterrupted time to use as you please. We, us, you, me…have to claim it. It has to be a priority.”So why was I measuring this collaboration by the same outcome-focused standards I routinely challenge elsewhere?
Pam Vale
Comparing our reflections
As I compared my reflections with Pam’s, some common themes emerged.
You might like to know that I have a pile of things sitting in my studio and call it the “Pile for Pam”. It is the pile that was supposed to have crossed an ocean by now, and in a few days time, it will.
Neither of us felt that the project had been derailed because the physical exchange of goodies hadn’t happened yet. Pam wrote that the exchange for her was “(like pretty much everything) is more about the giving than the getting”. She described the pleasure of selecting items, connecting them to themes and imagining me receiving them. The creative act didn’t just embrace the collection of items and posting of a package. It just started in a different, less visible way to what we expected it would.
“We were paying attention to our budding collaboration. The swap hadn’t happened, but our creative work wasn’t absent either - it was there, there, just bubbling away under the surface in the unfolding messy bits”.
[Debs]
Doubting ourselves, getting it right
Pam also brought another insight into the conversation that hadn’t come up in my own reflection. She spoke candidly about the doubts that surfaced for her when she was gathering for the exchange. She openly shared some of the internal dialogue that accompanied the exchange process: “I won’t do this right. I won’t give her what she needs. I will be judged for what I selected”. That struck me because, as creatives, we often talk about making, but seldom about the emotional labour that accompanies it. We overlook this kind of invisible work and how we cope with it.
Whether it’s self-doubt, moodling, making connections, collecting scraps, mulling over possibilities or simply paying attention, there are all sorts of creative currents bubbling away beneath the surface of our creative doing. Yet because they don’t contribute towards a finished product, we fail to recognise them as an integral part of the creative process.
This is not so dissimilar to when I pay attention to what I call the ‘mundanity of the everyday’: the tiny overlooked details of life - creative practice is not so different.
The shared art of paying attention
The collaborative exchange between Pam and I has already started
Have we become so accustomed to focusing on the outcomes and operating within the subconscious assumptions that we have lost our ability to notice the form of the process itself?
Pam lives in Rhode Island. I live on the Isle of Wight. As of today, our collections of bits and pieces still haven’t crossed the ocean. But the collaborative exchange between Pam and myself has already started in earnest - we’ve been noticing, reflecting; we continue to be curious through the shared art of paying attention.
We thought the disruption to our collaboration was that the date passed without us mailing our envelopes to each other. But I think the real disruption was discovering how many subconscious, unchallenged assumptions we hold about what creative practice should look like. The disruption revealed how much creative life exists before, beneath and beyond the finished ‘thing’.
So I’m curious.
What part of your creative life are you overlooking because it doesn’t look like “the work” yet?
What assumptions might you be paying homage to, without being aware of it?
Until next time, stay curious!
Pam Vale hosts and writes:
Related pieces
Looking for updates from my studio?
The Moodling Letter is where I share what I’m working on - from photography and mixed media pieces to hand-drawn maps - along with invitations to exhibitions, open studio days, and workshops (both in-person and online) where you can experience or take part in the process.
Sunday Pocket Notes are small reflective postcards - moments of curiosity, insight, and exploration from inside and outside Mappery.
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