Last week my good friend Stephen Shingler (http://stephenshingler.blogspot.com) came to visit. He's a visual artist from Raleigh, North Carolina that I first met well over 10 years ago, back in Tallahassee. He and his good friend Geoff Wood (http://www.geoffwoodphotography.com), also from Raliegh have a schedule to stick to. They're calling on their creative energy using different makers' work spaces, processes & materials as inspiration for an entire body of work. For three days they came in and out of the shop as I was forging and grinding steel to create my own work. Disappearing, they would come back an hour later working on something totally different. Geoff would grab some coal dust, throw it in an old film camera and ask me to hold a hammer while he snapped a few shots. He won't know what happens until it's processed. Stephen collected the carbon dust from around the anvil and use it as the foundation for a painting that eventually turned into more of a collage.

It was, as it always is, awesome to catch up with an old friend and meet another creative minded person. The energy they harnessed from a process I use everyday with was energizing. The amount of work they created while here, and ideas for future work, was massive and sprawling. Tired and exhausted, we relaxed into the summer evenings around small quiet fires and sharing our prospective current favorite whiskeys.

Once they complete their work, visiting a few other artisans studio spaces, they'll be showing work they produced in a gallery in Raleigh. More on that to come. Stay tuned for photos of work from the creative collaborative weekend.