Making Baos

A Collaboration, December 2021

PhD student Elaine Almeida meets icon, symbol and collaborator Gui Gui the bunny. The bunny of another peer, Gui Gui featured prominently throughout the course via iconography and storytelling, with Almeida making an Instagram account and illustrations of the bunny for her collaboration with Gui Gui's owner. Dr. Michael Peterson poses in the back with peace signs. Gui Gui is unimpressed.

This collaborative project between myself and Clara Molina Blanco was a roughly sketched design for a dating-style web app to help artists find collaborative partners. We named the app Co(he)art: a punny take on the title of our class, Co-Art. Using a free online platform, we each designed our own profiles which included such categories as portfolio, bio, location, skills, desired longevity, and a short personal definition of what collaboration means to us.

In this collaboration, I made Baos with my friend Veronica. First, we prepared three different kinds of fillings: beef and glass noodles, tofu with tree fungus and carrots, and glass noodles with green onions. Then we pan-fried them after wrapping them together.

A Mask, Mo Chen & Nora Renick Rinehart

Dimension Various, 2021

This representation of a public kiosk is intended to accumulate info, notices, or other ephemera in and out of a museum or art gallery setting. The text is a sample from writings on collaboration from Elaine Almeida and Juan de Hoyos.

Meg Wilson and Nora Renick Rinehart co-authored a paper titled “The Third Horse: Magical Horse-Friends School of Collaboration.” In order to illustrate the theme of the paper, the artists bedazzled two rubber horse heads with glitter, tattoos the say “frienship” (sic) and “magic”, and jewelry. The artists then posed for a portrait.

MFA grad students Kate Davidson and Meg Wilson came together to share short stories with each other. After silently exchanging books that each had found meaningful for themselves, they sat together and read outside on the steps on a building. Davidson brought what is not yours is not yours by Helen Oyeyemi, and Wilson brought Buffalo Gals by Ursula K. Le Guin.

We both agreed to meet at my studio for our collaboration. There was a miscommunication between us about our meeting time. However, we met at my studio at per scheduled time. Our collaboration began with a casual talk about us. We were discussing studies, our jobs, and our plans for the future. After some time, we returned to the collaboration topic. Honestly, we both did not have any idea about what to do. Nora noticed some posters were hanging on my studio wall. They were 108 Surya Namaskars performances on top of the mountains in the world. My collaborator got interested in “108 Surya Namaskar” particularly 108 number and its representation. I explained to Nora about 108 number and its importance in yoga so on. The cultural context of 108 and its representation was conceptualized by both of us to draw 108 beads to do 108 serigraphy prints. Nora is an expert at making serigraphy prints. We drew 108 beads one after one on the paper. Those beads drew randomly in irregular sizes. Nora took it for further serigraphy printing. But my teammate found that the serigraphy screen was not functional to print. The instant I was informed of this situation. We both had a consensus to show only drawing of 108 beads. Our collaboration was consensus, geniality, creative, conceptual, discernment, and embracing.