This past Saturday night, Robbi and I drove across the bridge to attend Field + Foundry, a gathering of Baltimore and DC creative types. The occasion was good food and conversation. The location was an empty storefront that had previously housed a fried chicken/Chinese restaurant.

We had been asked to speak, and so we volunteered to get there a bit early and help set up. When we arrived, a long table was set up for dinner. But there were still preparations to be made.

We volunteered to help. My task involved a tall ladder, some twine, and a long pole.

Robbi’s involved helping Laicie (of A Thousand Threads) – baker, blogger and co-creator of Field +Foundry – assemble foliage into a kind of chandelier.

The pressed tin ceilings were decaying but beautiful.

My task (to hang a horizontal pipe that would support the crepe paper photo backdrop) was surprisingly successful.

Though at one point I did have to call in the cavalry in the form of the estimable Mark Heely, co-creator of Field + Foundry, husband of Laicie, and provider of all things alluringly edible.

The edible things started appearing long before it was appropriate to eat them. After all, the doors were not yet open to the guests-at-large. And yet I had to stare at exquisite cheeses, spreads, and great heaps of gin-cured salmon.

Robbi thwarted temptation by applying stickers to the backs of the books we would be giving away later in the evening.

As part of our current branding overhaul, we’ve recently developed a new R & M logo. The event seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a test run.

Because Field + Foundry is curated by people with taste and knowledge of all things lovely, everything was so nice to look at.

Even the beer was stylish.

It was the sort of setup one might expect to see in the middle of an open field in Tuscany. And not in an empty storefront on North Avenue in Baltimore.

But such is the wonder of Field + Foundry. Creating something wonderful in unexpected places.

Before the rest of the folks arrived, there was a bit of sweeping to do.

And there was the matter of personal beautification.

After some initial missteps, Robbi emerged quite lovely on the other side. (This is just my opinion, of course.)

Eventually the doors did open and the others did arrive. I might have taken photos of them were I not so utterly focused on the salmon, itself a collaboration between Robbi (who pulled it from the Pacific) and Mark (who exacted a ruthless campaign of culinary wizardry upon it).

I attacked my plate with my patented relentlessness and might have been content to remain grazing all night long.

But Robbi reminded me of the photo backdrop I had worked so hard to create.

And so we paused for the obligatory selfie.

The event was sponsored by Microsoft’s search engine Bing, which sponsors (if you did not know) lots of creative ventures and events in an attempt to fulfill their mission to create and promote beautiful experiences.

By way of saying thanks, they provided each of us with a Bing tote bag filled with various goodies, including a collapsable light reflector (for taking beautiful photographs, of course).

We set a smattering of our books on a bench so that people could get a sense of what we do.

And so they did.

And we set one Micro-Flash Picture Book at each table setting, in anticipation of the group exercise we had planned for later in the evening.

One of the many multiply-talented folks in attendance, Lindsay Ponta, happens to be a calligrapher (among other things, which you can find HERE), and so she created this lovely sponsor board.

On which we were included.

Along with our Joshua Wolf Shenk and his publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which generously donated copies of Josh’s book Powers of Two to every Field + Foundry attendee. It seemed to us like the perfect follow-up reading material to an evening devoted to collaboration. Since you probably weren’t there, you can buy your own copy HERE. It’s a damn good read.

One of the evening’s activities involved a “make your own bitters” station. Laicie and Mark had spent weeks preparing various ingredients by soaking various fruits, herbs, and spices in grain alcohol.

Guests were invited to mix their own bitters blend by combining a bit of this with a bit of that (clove, lemon, cardamom, anyone?).

It was kind of like an elaborate chemistry experiment.

All the while, Mark was working away in a tiny non-kitchen in the back, preparing dish after breathtaking dish with surprising grace. Robbi and I both agreed that left to the same challenge we surely would have scorched everything beyond recognition while burning the place down.

We ate dinner.

It was superb. Crab cakes and fresh baguettes topped with homemade spreads and pasta salad topped with fresh ricotta and farm fresh tomatoes and kale salad with fresh figs. It was the kind of food so delicious that I forgot to stop to take photos. And so you will have to imagine it.

Then, suddenly, it was time for us to speak, and so I felt that obligatory moment of gut-leveling concern. Would they like me? Would I be funny? Did I have anything…ANYTHING…at all to say?

Robbi, cool as a cucumber that has been recently refigerated, squeezed my hand, and all was well.

We talked a bit about the three types of collaboration we encounter most commonly. Passive (in which one takes something created by another person, whether a piece of writing or an image or even an idea, and uses it as the inspiration or platform to create something new), Active (in which two parties come together in equal exchange to discuss, plan, and create some new thing drawing on the roughly equal contributions of both), and Directed (in which two parties come together to make or do something, but one of the parties has a degree of authority or ownership that exceeds the other; we most often encounter this when working with editors and art directors, who are, by definition beholden to agendas beyond the creative work itself, most often the need to sell a certain number of copies, but also the need to live up to certain editorial standards or sensibilities of the company they work for).

After all the blah, blah, blah, we ran the group through our tried and true Microflash Picture Book exercise. Robbi explained how it worked.

And then we dived in. As is usually the case, fun was had.

Laughter rolled throughout the room.

In the exercise, one person writes a sentence and passes it along to the next person, who must draw a picture (in only 45 seconds) that communicates as well as possible the meaning of the sentence. Then, in the next round, another person is asked to translate that drawing back into a sentence. And so on.

As the game continues, the original sentence becomes badly lost in visual to language to visual to language translation.

Robbi and I shared our books with the group at the end.

And a willing volunteer shared his.

Beyond the fun, the idea is this: even in this extremely passive collaboration (there is no discussing what one will write or draw with one’s partner) there is a great deal of energy and fun. Collaboration is a means of tapping into a central vein of inspiration. It has a way of moving that which is stuck. It is fuel, it is process, it is access to a greater world of possibility beyond one’s own.

Eventually, it was time to go home. We had a long drive ahead.

As we walked back to our car, we stopped to admire the murals on the outside of the building.

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The area (in the vicinity of North Avenue and N. Charles St.) is emerging as a kind of arts district.

Looking at the variety of styles and the quality of the murals…

…it’s nice to see that things are off to a solid start.

And that’s that. Thanks so much to Laicie and Mark for creating Field + Foundry, for inviting us to speak, and for feeding us so very well. Thanks to Bing for providing the funding to make it happen. And thanks to Melissa Hope, who joined Laicie and Mark in curating the event and in assembling the group of creative folks who made it such a special evening – check out her much more beautifully photographed recap of the event HERE.

We drove back across the bridge inspired, remembering why we do what we do, excited to have had the opportunity to share our ideas with willing ears, and certain that it would be a long time before we would eat so well again.