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I have printed the tidal tables for the month and pinned them above the desk. Everything arranges itself around them now. Which mornings I can walk out to the rocks with paper, when the water is low enough to reach the good seaweed, what hour the light is right on the tide pools. My partner asked what we're doing Saturday and I said, low tide at 14:17, and he didn't ask again. It's fine. It's fine because the paper needs the water and the water sets its own clock and my job is mostly to show up on time. But I caught myself once adjusting a dentist appointment around the neap tide and thought maybe this has gone past collaboration into something else. Still, there is nothing like the moment the paper touches seawater at the exact right level of salt. The blue decides itself. I just hold it down.

I'm working on this piece, pietra dura sort of thing but with smalti, very fine cutting, very controlled. And yesterday I'm setting pieces and I notice there's a cicada shell stuck in the thinset near the edge. Must have fallen from the ceiling while I was spreading it, died there, dried out, became part of the substrate. My first thought was to pick it out. But I looked at it for a while and I don't know. It's been there the whole time I've been working on this thing. It's not hurting anything. It's almost invisible unless you're right up close. So I'm going to tesserae right over it and leave it in there. A little fossil. A tiny uninvited collaborator from the studio ceiling. This is what happens when you work on the floor. You make deals with the dust and the insects and the cats. 🙂

I took on a private student a few years back, right after the worst of the crisis here. She was young, maybe 24, no money at all but she wanted to learn mosaic so badly. She showed up at my studio with a five-liter tin of her family's olive oil and asked if we could trade. I said yes because I remembered what it was like to be young and broke and hungry for a skill. She came once a week for six months. She was terrible with the hammer and hardie at first, kept shattering the glass instead of cutting it. But she learned. She ended up getting a commission for a hotel lobby last year. When she sent me photos I actually teared up a little. Meanwhile I get DMs every week from people who want to "collaborate", meaning they want my work for exposure, or they want me to teach them for free because "it would be good for my brand." I don't answer those anymore. The olive oil was good, by the way. Her family makes it near Kalamata. I used it for six months and every time I cooked with it I thought, this is what paying attention to someone actually looks like.

A gallery took me on a few years back, and the owner asked if I could "loosen up" my style. Make it more gestural, more contemporary. She wanted me to paint the way someone else paints. I said no, and we parted ways not long after. I get that galleries have a vision. But when they ask you to change what you do before they've even sold a single piece of yours, that's not a collaboration, that's them wishing you were a different artist. Anyone else had a gallery ask you to be someone else? Did you bend or walk?

got a DM last week from a skincare brand that wanted to "collaborate", which in their world meant i paint something with their product in it, post it, and they "amplify" (their word) on their channels. no payment. they said "the exposure would be great for both of us." i asked what they were offering. they sent back a moodboard and a brief that literally said "make it go viral" as the objective. i said i don't control viral and asked what the budget was. they said they'd "love to discuss value alignment first." i told them my rate is $800 for a commercial post. they said they'd circle back. they circled back yesterday to offer me $50 and a "feature" on their story. i said no thanks. they asked if i could do it for the "portfolio opportunity." i hate it here lol. anyway what's the best way you've shut down an insulting offer without burning the bridge entirely, asking for a friend who is me

I keep a small notebook with every brush I've ever owned. The maker, the size, the year I bought it, and the year it finally gave out. My oldest current one is a Series 7 No. 2 from 1998. The ferrule is worn thin and the handle has my thumbprint worn into the lacquer, but the point still holds like the first day I drew it across a test sheet. I don't know why I started the docket. I think I wanted proof that care adds up, that a hand does its own kind of bookkeeping. A student asked me last week why I bother repairing brushes instead of replacing them. She meant it kindly. I told her that a new brush knows nothing yet. Mine remember which paper I used in 2004, and they behave accordingly. She laughed the way people do when they think you're joking. I wasn't. It occurs to me I've outlived every painting I ever made in some sense, because paintings stop changing and I don't. But the brushes do. They wear down to match the hand that holds them, and that's the one honest collaboration I have in this room.

The studio got so cold this week my coffee went cold before I drank it. Twice. I stood there holding a lukewarm cup looking at a piece that's been waiting on the right bit of metal for a month and thought maybe the heating bill is the real reason this installation exists, it's the most consistent collaborator I have. I finally said fine and rigged a second heater out of an old reflector I found in the trash behind the theatre. Doubles as a light. Now half the room is warm and blinding and the other half is freezing and dark, which honestly is the most honest description of making anything I've ever come up with. The piece I was waiting on? I found what I needed in my own scrap pile the moment I stopped looking for it. Of course. Every time.

Once a gallery asked me to provide them with a list of local florists they could collaborate with for openings. I was baffled. Anyone else get strange requests during outreach?

just got an email from a gallery i hadn't heard from in like 8 months. they want to know if i'm 'still interested in collaborating'. lol. anyone else dealt with this level of radio silence followed by a casual check-in? what did you even say back?

Set up thirty sheets on the rocks this morning, weighted with stones, the good glass held down with fishing net. Sun was perfect, low and honest. Then the sea did what the sea does and came in sooner than I planned. Watched the Prussian blue wash away, sheet by sheet, like the paper had never held anything at all. Some of them I'd coaxed for days. The seaweed pressed just so, the exposure timed to the morning light. I keep telling myself the ocean is the collaborator. Today it felt more like the editor. Cut everything I was too attached to, left me with the blank ones and the ones that turned a strange pale grey I don't recognise yet. I'll go back tomorrow. The tide won't ask my permission either way, and that's maybe the whole point.