If you had asked me, even a few years ago, how much of the art I have created in my lifetime has been collaborative, I’d have given you a tiny number, a few per cent.
My stories and novels tend to have the least collaboration. Most of my stories are now done in relative isolation, with proof reading and feedback from my wife, Laura Belford and occasional critiques from my good friend Sally McBride. Some of my stories have been written collaboratively, with folks like my old friend and coworker, Paul Curtis; but most of those were never published.
A few of my stories that stalled out on the almost there stage and were helped by contributions from Sally and I wrote a first draft of a novella that was expanded and published by Sally. She was also by co-publisher and editor of the literary magazine, TransVersions, which we launched in Victoria late in the last millennium. Several other people were key in that endeavor, including our Governor-General award winning poetry editor, Phyllis Gotlieb.
Around that same time, I did one illustration with the artist, GAK. And lately, I have collaborated with my friend, photographer Do-Ming Lum (most of the images to date have featured the model, Ciara Antoski.
The first edition of my novel, The Human Template benefitted from input from more than a dozen beta readers.
Oh – and I have also had the privilege of ‘collaborating’ on two sculpture by well-known Canadian sculptor, E.B. Cox; A wooden moon mask completed while E.B. was alive that he invited me to keep (actually there’s also a wooden bear I painted for him, but that long-since sold); and an alabaster sculpture he had began that I had a chance to post-humously complete.
When I hold this up against totals of almost 100 shorts stories and poems. An equal number of non fiction articles. Four books, 40 sculptures and hundreds of piece of visual art, it doesn’t seem like much. Numerically, it’s quite low. But every one of those artworks means something special to me, and collaborations with other artists is what makes them that way.
Pre-order Sally McBride’s upcoming collection, The Price of Memory.
