I met Steve on Bedford ave in Williamsburg, he was outside displaying some large paintings street gallery style. Bright and vivid the imagery, you see and have to pause to take in and process the work. I stop and we chat for a minute. Honestly, I‘d been having one of those days where the conversation was needed. It redirected me. I gained a bit of energy and it confirmed some things for me that day. I took some photos and shared them with him later, also posting them on IG. Since then Steve and I have continued to chat. He had an opening in Long Island I attended and brought another Brooklyn artist who just happened to have grown up in the same neighborhood. I only found this out while on the walk over from the LIRR.

Recently I started assembling different pieces of mine to wheat paste in various areas I'd been staking out for a while. One day I'm chatting with Steve in the DM and it dawns on me he has the perfect work to be made into posters for street art. I tell'em send me an image so I can make posters like the ones I've been making. My thought was it would be cool to get them up in proximity of the area where he sells his paintings. A tactic no different from ads plastered everywhere in Chelsea close to a venue leading up to an event. Steve’s never done any wheat paste and he asks if I can give him some pointers. Steve has also been dropping knowledge about various things art related, introducing me to other artists, people with venues and galleries. We use the DMs effectively with a healthy balance of ideas and opinions exchanged. 

There are so many ways to collaborate. It’s just working together with a person or group of people to create something with a shared goal. Far too often we overcomplicate things and stop before we even give opportunity to possibility, simply because we’ve not truly considered what collaboration means and or what it can mean. Also, sometimes collaborations fail outright because people aren’t fully vested or not actually clear on the full details and everyone's intentions within a project, something which should be well established before any manner of actual work is done. 

Everyday I think about how much we all could be doing to reach individual and collective goals if we collaborated more. In order for this to happen we first need to be clear on what we can and cannot offer especially when approaching others. What our capacity is for any given project. Knowing well ahead whether or not we have the bandwidth to engage collaborative work. Most importantly a true understanding of what it means to collaborate and a desire to do so with positive aims.

You can see more of Steve’s work like the one in this video of me assembling a four panel poster on his Instagram @steve.camillone.

If you’re interested in making posters of your own here is a link to the site I use to create mine. https://rasterbator.org/