The Art of Collaboration

Misao Cates knew she’d recognize the spot when she saw it.

Keeping in mind the mandala of natural materials she and collaborator Kim Fong had been selected to create, the artist took several location-scouting treks with organizers of this year’s Art on the Beltline, hunting for the place their work would fit best.

Many bits of the historic loop trail being readied for this year’s edition of the city’s largest temporary public art show looked promising. But none looked exactly right. 

Until one day, when the walkers pulled behind Memorial Drive restaurant H. Harper Station – the grandly rehabbed former train stop – and someone pointed out an original telegraph pole still standing tall, right up against the tree line.

Any wires that once carried electricity to or from the post were long gone, but most of its glass domed insulators were still intact. And its history as a conductor of important messages seemed ideal for her project, “Whispers.”

That was a few weeks ago.

It wasn’t until this past Saturday that Cates and Fong were able to start the actual construction process – with help from their husbands, friends and a few family members.

Thanks to that thick wall of trees, their spot stays shady until at least noon, so by the time everyone was about ready to call it a day, they’d dug out the ground-level shape of their project – a 20-foot round, outlined in plastic garden edging. The circle’s interior, which will hold a mandala they’ll make from natural materials, is divided into yin and yang.

A network of wires will connect the mandala to the old pole, Cates said, forming a sort of “asymmetrical teepee.” Hundreds of swatches of cotton-linen fabric – hand-dyed in colors of earth and sea and sky, each holding a message someone wants to send out into the world – will hang from the wires. Dangling among the knotted “whispers” will be chains of polished glass and shells.

The idea, Cates said, is to transmit people’s various answers to the question: “What would you like to whisper – and to whom?”

A Facebook request is generating some responses. As they arrive, the artists trace the messages onto strips of cloth. Once the show opens, visitors can add their own, from a station they’ll stock with strips of pale-colored linen and permanent markers.

Fong says they loved the fabric, because it’s so loose and flowing and will look look great outdoors. Even as it weathers.

“You’ll watch the letters fade away,”  she said. “That will be the whispers being released.”

What kinds of notes have they gotten so far?

Global wishes for a better world; pleas for more energy-efficiency or greater economic justice.

Fong was surprised at some of the more personal notes, she said, the ones going, “from parents to their children, saying, ‘we’ll always be here.’ ”

Each new discovery along the way has caused their work to evolve.

“The design didn’t change much,” Cates said. “But the details did.”

Originally, they thought the pole would go inside the circle, but decided on the spot that morning that it didn’t have to be.

“We both like asymmetry,” Fong said, with a laugh.

Iron plates and old railroad spikes they dug up while clearing the site will be used to anchor the cable wires that will visually connect the mandala to the old telegraph pole, adding yet another layer of texture and meaning into the piece that centers on ideas of balance and communication – tying it back to the Beltline, and the way it evolved. But Cates is quick to add they won’t change the historical wooden structure in any way.

On Saturday, they weren’t working from sketches – just the evolving images they held in their minds.

“We think we’re on the same page,” said Cates, turning to catch her partner’s eye. They’ve known each other for years, she said; she’s helped Fong on projects for her interior design business Studio Song (www.studio-song.com) but this is the first time they’ve collaborated on such a big project together.

“We both just wabi sabi it,” said Fong – using the Japanese phrase loosely translated as seeing beauty in imperfection and finding meaning in the natural cycles of this old world.

In this context, you sense it means they have faith in their artwork’s natural evolution, and feeling their way there.

Art on the Beltline opens on Sept. 10. A future column will check back in to see the completed works by Misao Cates and Jaynie Gillman Crimmins (chronicled previously in this space). To learn more, visit the website at http://art.BeltLine.org

See earlier articles in this series:

http://patch.com/A-k4X3

http://patch.com/A-j20B