The thing that helps keep an art practice alive is interacting with other 
creative people.  Without being able to discuss ideas and obtain critical 
feedback about work, an artistic practice nigh on disappears up the effete 
vacuum that is one's own bottom. I say this having attempted on a number of 
occasions to remove myself (in disgust at the opportunistic cronyism) from 
the art world only to discover that my proctologist has an interest in the 
arts and would like to know if I paint in oils.  Best to stay with my own 
kind, especially when it comes to your doctor's cleverly-barbed and witty 
conversation which begins, "Do you paint landscapes or portraits?"

This Partners in Print website is a rather wonderful way to initiate 
dialogue and network with other artists.  Sure there's NAVA and The 
Australia Council, but when was the last time you dropped into a handy and 
welcoming art's place (like NSW Writer's Centre) to get decent information 
on how to kick your practice along as well as make contacts on the way?  But 
hey look on the horizon - The PP Website is only a keyboard away from other 
artists and you don't  have to posture that effete bott out the door to 
contact them.  There's probably steak knives too, but Florrimell will kill 
me if I make any promises.

Interaction with other artists can be highly productive and I say this 
because much of my artistic career is spent in collaboration with others.  
It's something we didn't get lectures on at art school and outside of all of 
the po-mo "let's break all of these Platonic colosseum's down with a 
rhizome"-thingy, the emphasis in the artworld continues to rest on 
individual artistic production.  An individual is far easier to promote and 
tax, and you certainly don't see any notes on how to divvy up funds 
resulting from collaboration in the NAVA professional practice sheets you 
pay $25 to get in touch with the real art world.  Collaboration is messy.  
And its even messier when its is between a boy-san and a girl-san.  
Collaboration worked for Gilbert  & Sullivan, Cale and Reed, even those 
pesky Chapman brothers who churn out cunty kid heads by the bucket.  But 
when you talk about Christo and Jean-Claude, people say, Jean-who?  Maria 
Ambromovic's career took an interesting leap forward when she stopped 
splitting hairs with Jani.Yoko Ono is still JL's sidekick even if she can 
stuff a tree in a box, and as for the Wilson sisters, you don't know who I'm 
talking about do you?  Collaboration is underrated, underestimated, and 
underexplored.  One particular problem with collaboration which is also the 
unmentionable truth behind why most artists choose not to do so, is that 
synchronicity is not always in accord between collaborating artists.  
Collaboration can often be a bloody war of wills, a battle of blood and 
beauty, a field day for disagreement, pretension, attachment and arrogance.  
Shared vision cannot be seen for all of the independent ones wavering around 
in the ether.  The wonderful irony is that such discord is often the spark 
and light which ignites a creative product that would otherwise have gone 
underdiscovered.  In successful collaboration there is no you or me or 
anybody's stamp.  Like a fractured fairytale, the product is often enigmatic 
and takes year's to ingest.  You just can't get that on your own, it's just 
a matter of finding the right person(s) to get the chemistry working.

Interactaction between artists, virtual or physical, has unpooled 
productivity potential far beyond the imagination of current art school 
agendas.  And if you're not making the right connections, stay stuned.  
Partners in Print will update their website regularly and welcome your 
feedback and comments.  In future columns I'd like to share my interest in 
art group activity and history.  Let's get out of this barren rutt that is 
the careerist, opportunistic and highly exclusive art millieu we find 
ourselves aspiring toward.  It's not the way art was intended, methinks, but 
there's certainly room for debate.