Collaborative Arts

lessons in making together; a gallery of us

“Swift Shoes, Henry Thoreau Goes Skating,” William Sulit, for an original book arts project combined with a Beth Kephart poem

In a few weeks, Bill and I will celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary, a marker that, on some days, returns our past to me. How we met, who we are—together and apart: I have, it’s true, been caught within that whirl. (And in making Bill a gift that is, well, difficult to secretly make, as he is in and out of my paper room on a never-predictable basis.)

Time, and how it passes. Love, and how it writes itself into our skin.

(Oh, my skin.)

I’ve been thinking, too, about how we learned—it did take time—to work together, co-creating BIND Arts, our Etsy shop, and our sometimes-but-not-always-weather-proof craft booth; building Juncture Workshops and those memoir resources; and balancing my words and Bill’s art in a number of book projects.

Collaboration offers bountiful lessons in humility and forgiveness. We step back, we step in. We assert, we cede. We turn the painting upside down or the lop off the extra words. We say you first, no me first, take a look, don’t look now, tell me the truth, please be kind, you need to really read this, you need to really see this, are we talking only to ourselves? do we love it? do you? who are we kidding? does it matter? can we invent something new? will we will lose if we don’t try? what is losing, anyway? and, really, what is winning?

Bill and I have established rhythms over time, and while I am so much older than I ever imagined I would be (while Bill remains perpetually young), I am also wiser about how ideas get shared, expanded, and trusted. I am more grateful for the journey that I take with him, the many things I have learned from him, the pride I take in standing with him, in our booth, or with our books, or in our house, alone, together.

And so today, in anticipation of forty years, a gallery of some of the things we have made over time—in no order and blurrily photographed under the gray, diffusing light of this nearly rainy day. (I’m not including our son here, though he is, of course, our singularly best creation.) Oil paintings, water colors, charcoal drawings. Digital fantasies and a little girl named Trini. A bizarre world of work (that mirrored our experience in corporate America, where we also collaborated). Wood-cut-ish art. A painting of my handmade books with a bird perched on top. Bill’s typography accented by my paper bojagi art. A book full of garden songs and Bill’s gorgeous photographs. My marble art and Bill’s proportions. A journey in which Bill’s art is the centerpiece and my poem fragments are mere suggestive prompts.

We have tipped the balance. We have embraced new genres and new media. We have shrugged and asked, Why not?

A gallery not of bestselling books. Just a gallery of dreams.

With thanks to the editors—Georgia Hughes, Johanna Vondeling,

Lex Orgera

, Caitlyn Dlouhy,

Laura Stanfill

, and Jessie Burns among them—who made room for the quixotic in Bill and me.