According to the Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary, the word collaboration means to “work jointly especially in a literary or artistic production.” Three Rivers Artists Guild members Mary B. Powers and Kathy Bingaman are now collaborating on a series of pieces, Powers’ metalwork and Bingaman’s polymer fantasies, resulting in wearable art. Powers describes how they began working together:
Art is not created in a vacuum and though many artists feel they need isolation and quiet for the creative spirit to manifest, most will agree that the best ideas come from the wide world around us and the people we meet. I met Kathy Bingaman 2 years ago when we became charter members of the Three Rivers Artists Guild. After seeing Kathy’s work for the past two years it recently occurred to me to ask her if she was interested in collaborating.
As she tells it:
(Kathy’s phone: Ring, Ring) “Hello?”
“Hi Kathy, can you make me some glow in the dark mushrooms I can set in copper and silver?”(I had met a man who owns a gourmet mushroom business and is developing a TV cooking show about mushrooms and wanted mushroom jewelry for his website.)
The first meeting in Kathy’s studio was an intense personal fact finding mission. I could not imagine how she made a polymer bead as complicated as she does and she could not envision how I hook all the metal items together to come up with an amulet or turtle.
We spent a lot of time saying, “How’d you do that?”
It was great.
Come see the results of their collaboration at the Guild’s Holiday Gallery, 53 N. Main St. in historic downtown Three Rivers, across from the Riviera Theater. Hours, through Christmas Eve:
Mon. – Sat. 10:00 – 6:00
Sun. 12:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Two of photographer 
