Collaboration

Gardening—the kind where I get my hands and knees dirty—is good for my soul. I hear lessons about life in the garden: planting, watering, and weeding. Last week the garden’s lessons were about collaboration.

On Tuesday, Wendy Huhn, a mixed media textile artist from Oregon, came to Flagstaff to teach. On Friday night, she gave a slide talk entitled “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” about her artistic collaboration with artist Melissa Holzinger. She spoke the truth about collaboration: it isn’t always a pretty picture, but we grow from the experience.

On Sunday, at Wendy’s suggestion, we decided to play in the dirt, planting a bare terrace in the front of our house. We took my van over to Flagstaff Native Plant and Seed.

The plants she picked were completely different than the ones I chose. We came home with deep purple butterfly bushes, floppy and serene, and tickseed, its lacy foliage punctuated with pale yellow flowers. And black-eyed Susans, a plant I have always dismissed as too pedestrian. We got them home and spent a companionable couple of hours planting and watering.

Months ago, I sowed some cosmos seed in the backyard garden beds. All the rain has done its job. In spite of general neglect the cosmos has begun to bloom, and look somewhat less ignored.

But the garden Wendy and I planted together is richer, more interesting. A job I’d been avoiding became a pleasant team effort, a way to spend a bit of time with a good friend.

True collaboration is a delicate thing. It involves all parties to the same deep degree in a process where all participants are valued equally. Ideally, egos are set aside for the good of the process.

Collaboration takes us out of solitary confinement and leads us into new territory. It puts us inside someone else’s skin. We see our work and theirs with new eyes. It changes us forever.

Granted, planting a garden isn’t the same as creating artwork. But still, it felt like a tiny step toward something—a wakening, the hint of a stronger connection.

This writing appeared in Flagstaff Live! on August 12, 1999.