My name is Ellen Ingwerson, a junior, double majoring in Film and Media Studies and Fine Art working as a fellow for ArtWalla located downtown.
“Collaboration” has been the overarching theme of the semester. As a film & media studies major, I am working 20/7 with my own, as well as other, film groups – constantly updating each other, fitting our schedules together, networking with the community to find actors, splitting up tasks between individuals, meeting deadlines, and receiving critique from peers and viewers. As an art major, I am always revisiting my goals as a creator and student – asking myself if I’m stepping out of my comfort zone, understanding critique and allowing the ego attached to my work to step aside. Something I definitely wasn’t expecting, was that the similarities with my ArtWalla fellowship were more in line with creative processes than with actual art-work itself.
In my academic-art life, I find that starting a piece of artwork requires being open and receptive to new ideas and ways to approach big projects over the common need to follow a rigid timeline. Slowly, this method of using the power of receptivity has also become a catalyst to make our process of collaboration more productive to our immediate needs and goals.
ArtWalla is currently working on a collaboration project with 8-9 nonprofits in Walla Walla promoting the arts for the community. Our goal is to provide Walla Walla Valley nonprofit arts organizations with greater efficiency and sustainability through shared office, storage, meeting and larger multi-use space, resulting in a more collaborative and accessible arts community.
My first day of work happened to be on a day when all the art non-profits that showed interest in collaborating, had one of their first meetings. Though I didn’t think I had any expectations coming in, I was surprised at how informal it was. But I would consider myself lucky coming into this project so early on (only a month after its start-up in August) as I get to understand and participate in the mechanics of a huge, long-term collaboration project in which I can best use my creative skills to keep it on track.
I never have an initial artistic plan before I find a reason to paint. It’s really an intuitive process, with flow but no structure. Similarly, there have been many moments in the past couple of slow months where too much structure led to a dead end. I have made a point to restructure our approach – splitting up tasks between the non-profit representatives, developing a different group dynamic in governance, and establishing a physical way of communicating via technology such as collaboration website programs.