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Interview
In 2003, the artists Robert Levers and Sally Reed exhibited three of their collaborative prints in a show entitled “Collaborations: Collaborative Artworks by New England Artists” at the Brickbottom Gallery in Somerville, Massachusetts. Interviews with both were conducted at the time and published in a booklet called Sharpening the Saw: Two Artists Collaborate, which also included reproductions of a series of collaborative digital prints they created together through email. It is available for free upon request. Below is the interview with Robert Levers.
Interviewer: It’s hard for me to imagine sharing the same “artistic” space with another person—how is it that you and Sally actually collaborate?
Levers: Well, it’s not really sharing the same space. It’s allowing your personality and interests to bump into those of another person and seeing where it goes. But you have to have enough trust in the person you’re working with—if fear is an ingredient of the collaborative stew, then it’s not really productive for either of you.
Interviewer: So when you started this collaboration, you already had a sense that you would be able to work with Sally?
Actually, no. I didn’t really know her at all, except that I immediately appreciated her sense of humor and so had an idea that it might be fun. The idea to collaborate grew out of a discussion that included another person. The three of us all started prints on two separate pieces of paper and gave one to each of the other participants. The funny thing was, we spent more time discussing things like dimensions and how many times we could each put our marks on the paper! In the end, we realized that we’d each made some assumptions about the process without actually agreeing on them.
Interviewer: What would those have been, and do you think it was a mistake not to have put them out at the beginning?
I’m not sure if it was a mistake or not. None of us had collaborated before, and so just by starting the process we came to understand exactly what that meant—both the up- and down-sides. For example, we learned that it was important to say that by virtue of one’s participation you accepted the notion that others might significantly alter or even obscure your work. I thought that that was an even exchange for accepting the possibility of growth in a way that wouldn’t normally occur.
Interviewer: When you say growth, what do you actually mean?
Well, as an artist what that means, and what I was referring to, is the broadening of the way in which you approach solving problems. And also, by being forced to confront the fact that many times, you’re just recycling solutions to problems that aren’t even really problems. When you’re the only person working on something, you're not only searching for a way to make the piece work as a whole, but you’re also, by the very nature of the process, determining exactly what the problem is. Sometimes we fall asleep at the switch and make the same piece over and over again, so it’s refreshing being forced to confront a problem not of your own making.
Interviewer: Now I know that both you and Sally make your living as graphic designers—how has that affected your work together?
That’s actually a really interesting question because it relates to what I was just saying about responding to a problem without really thinking about it. I know that both Sally and I could make anything look good—it’s the impulse of the designer to make sure that everything is in its place. For example, “How could we arrange these prints so that they look good together?” is not really a question about art—though to some degree you could argue that it’s about making sure the pieces are presented in such a way that people can enter them. I think one of the reasons I’m having so much fun with this collaboration is that when Sally and I are talking about the pieces, one of us can say, “that’s a graphic design solution” and we both know exactly what that means—and believe me, it’s not good!
Interviewer: So, getting back to the idea of growth again—in some ways, you seem to be viewing this collaboration with another graphic designer as an opportunity to free yourself from the tendency to make art that looks “comfortable”, for lack of a better description.
Yeah, you could say that. Sometimes what makes a work successful is creating a situation where the elements in your work are very consciously not in the “right” place, though they are exactly where they need to be to create the kind of tension that reminds us what it means to be alive.
Interviewer: Are there any positive things you both bring to the table as graphic designers then?
Oh, sure. One thing has definitely had a direct impact on the way we work together—since we both use a computer every day, and the software we tend to use is focused on creating or modifying things that are visual, it seemed natural to start a series that we sent to each other as email attachments. You know, I work on a file, send it off, Sally does something to it and sends it back, and it just keeps going. You can save every state of the “digital print,” and so the idea of hanging on to a detail you’ve fallen in love with doesn’t become an issue. You can continue to work on an image—literally cover it up—and you haven’t lost it. It’s quite freeing knowing that, in some ways, you’re not going to be held accountable for bringing the work to a successful conclusion. It’s ironic, because you would think that the discipline of having to deal with an ending is the only way to really “test” whether you’re an artist or a doodler. But you can go a lot of places you normally wouldn’t if you lose that sense of obligation to finishing.
Interviewer: It sounds, then, as if you’re getting both the opportunity to confront the unfamiliar in an effort to successfully push the art forward, AND the opportunity to wander without needing a wallet—two very different experiences.
Yes, I think that’s fair to say. We’ve tried to structure it in different ways so we keep ourselves motivated, but in the end, I think it comes back to that idea of growth. I don’t think I quite finished describing what that was about for me. It’s not just about enlarging the toolbox—it’s also about finding new ways of discovering what you’re made of. I mean that in all senses of the phrase—what your passions are, to what extent you’re willing to push the envelope, how can you develop ways that more easily lead to the places that make you happy. In the end, it’s really about making sure you’re not missing opportunities to be you—in fact, taking charge of creating all of those opportunities. Funny how collaboration can really help the process along.
Copyright 2008 Robert B. Levers
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