First Meet Up - you and i

From 28th - 30th September, you and I will be working on a collaboration within the AirSpace Gallery, the results of which will go on show in an exhibition 'Stick Up' showing 6 such pairings as part of BCB.
The first contact was you to me - an email opening the conversation.
We set out what we are not interested in, as well as a bit about Stoke-on-Trent's problems.
We decide to meet on Monday, when you were coming up to Spode to install.
We manage a short but fairly intensive pint, where a lot of ground is covered.
We talk about gaps.
I am interested in gaps, and feel that artists often operate in gaps. you talk about 'tooling' and I notice an area where I am lacking in knowledge. I look it up - Tool: A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process. Is this what you meant?
In the description of process and material I know I am not usually concerned or interested, but feel differently now that I am to work with someone who may be more used to and concerned with this sort of thing.
There seem to be a lot of points of departure within our two working methodologies and I suggest it might be an idea to try to 'map' how we usually go about developing an idea. It might be interesting to see if, though we work with different material and with a differing ethos, maybe there will be some crossovers?
During the conversation some themes emerge (mainly from our differing approaches).
These are:
permanence and ephemerality
solidity and disappearance


We also discuss the need to 'preorder' any materials that we might like to use within the collaboration. It seems bonkers to order materials before we really know what we are doing, but we wonder if we might be able to select a material that might represent each of us and our working practices, or if there might be something we would like to work with.

You talk about the responsibility of working with a material like ceramic, which I find really interesting. You say that whatever you make can potentially survive and endure for hundreds of years. Much of what I do involves temporary intervention or an event which means it is over quickly. Here again we are opposites.
We decide that a material for me could be paper. And a material for you could be brick. These materials also feel like a good starting point.

The final thing we discuss is that much of what I do as an artist is public - even the working out and thinking process happens out in the public, something which I find important. Revealing processes and being responsive is very much part of what I do. I keep a blog which explores my experiences in quite a reflexive way. You express that this again is opposite to your way of working. When writing, you like to deliberate and reflect on what you are writing before putting it out into the world.
For this reason this blog is set to private - different to my usual way of working. I wonder if it will ever escape.
I will try to map my working methods over the next few days and get back to you.