Four artists met in a panel Monday in Greenlaw Hall to discuss collaboration between people and passions that leads to what moderator Bland Simpson called “a whole greater than the sum of its parts.”
The panel, “Collaborating in the Arts,” was composed of memoirist, poet and UNC Writer-in-Residence Mary Karr; independent film writer and producer Joy Goodwin; artistic director of acclaimed string band The Red Clay Ramblers Jack Herrick; and author, moderator and UNC professor Bland Simpson.
It focused on the overlapping lives and projects of people seemingly involved in unrelated facets of the arts.
Whether through enhancing a particular discipline of art with another, combining ideas and talents or debate, each artist found collaboration to be a necessary and beneficial aspect to creation.
“There’s something about the energy of the creative debate that can better a movie — or anything,” Goodwin said.
The panelists discussed their individual successes and failures in the context of larger collaborations — sharing with the audience lessons they learned from the various people with whom they worked.
They agreed that collaboration merges the strengths of minds and mediums, but should be balanced with individual work in order to achieve what Herrick described as “the yin and yang of collaboration.”
Attesting to the occasional failure of collaboration was Karr herself, who recounted having to entirely rewrite the song, “Momma’s on a Roll,” off of the recording of “Kin,” the 2012 Americana album she co-wrote with singer Rodney Crowell.
Each artist, it seemed, was united by a love and need for music in his or her artwork.
