I was thrilled when our editor at The Martha’s Vineyard Times asked Dena Porter, who is one of their lead photographers, and me, a consistent article writer, to share about the nature of our frequent collaboration. It gave us both a chance to mull over the many nuances of how that word plays out in our lives. At the heart of our collaboration is friendship. For us, it is a shared love, respect, a passion for creativity…and lots of laughter. In actuality, we have been “collaborating” with one another from a previous chapter in both our lives.
Dena and I met in about 2002, in New York City, where we were both born, raised, and lived before we ended up being full-time residents on the Island. I was running a workshop for an organization I founded, the Career Internship Network (CIN), about ways to get high school students to reflect deeply on their internship experiences. Dena was working as the Director of Citywide Initiatives for high school students at The Afterschool Corporation (TASC) and helped support CIN through grants. Having seen my work, Dena asked me to collaborate on a project in which I helped high school students in her summer program reflect on their work experiences. Recognizing a kindred spirit in one another, we had a great time, and a friendship was born.
However, as is often the case in busy professional lives, our paths diverged until one day in about 2017, totally engrossed as usual while I was working out on the elliptical machine at my local gym, I looked up, and standing in front of me was Dena…in her cycling outfit ready to go into her favorite spin class. Reconnecting with her was like finding a lost sister. Dena, who had retired from her education career, feeling she had accomplished everything on her professional wish list, was now pursuing photography full-time — something that was going to bring her joy on a different level. We resonated too with the fact that neither of us had kids, but we had pursued careers that served urban youth, we shared a passion for the arts, and are the same age and stage in life. We also began supporting one another through the ups and downs of being the sole, long-term caregivers for loved ones in the final phase of their lives.
In June of that year, I mentioned to her that, having not been out of New York City for five years, I was taking a quick trip to the Vineyard, where I’d been vacationing since I was six months old. Turns out, Dena and her husband, who has since passed, had a place in Chilmark since the 1990s and were well-ensconced in the up-Island community. Although they weren’t on the Vineyard when I came, it was a momentous trip because on my last day walking Sepiessa Beach I heard a voice that told me to move here. Stunned, I came home and told Dena and an enormous part of the miraculous unfolding that allowed me to relocate was because of them. With their big hearts, they housed me while I checked out a place to live; moved me, box by box, on their weekend trips to and from their Manhattan apartment; and welcomed me into their large social circle.
Determined to reinvent myself as a writer and editor, I was able to swing a successful interview with Connie Berry and Geoff Currier at the Martha’s Vineyard Times showing them the books I had written about arts and culture among other materials. Our meeting went well and when they asked if I, by chance, also took photographs, I immediately told them about Dena who shortly after also joined the freelance team.
Although we aren’t always sent out together, we frequently collaborate on stories. Sometimes we’re assigned one, but we often pitch our own. We chat virtually every morning, filling each other in on a potential upcoming event, an interesting person for a possible profile, or an article we think would pique our editor’s interest. If we get the assignment, we share contact info and I tell Dena my approach. If I finish writing before she goes out to shoot, I’ll send the article to her for further context. As soon as she is done, Dena sends me a Dropbox invite so I can see her take on a story.
When I moved here, Dena had already been well into this new chapter of her life as a thriving fine art photographer. She particularly credits Alison Shaw for her influence and support sharing, “I looked at all the local photographers and immediately gravitated to Alison, who continues to model for me that all things are possible as an older woman in a persistently male-dominated industry.” She was selected for juried exhibitions and a global exhibition with Fujifilm. Three recent pieces of her work are now part of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital art collection. Dena recalls growing up without access to the arts in her public school education and is currently doing her own deep dive into art history. With this as my background, it’s just another area in which we enrich each other’s knowledge.
For me in addition to the newspaper, I am a freelance editor, working with authors on and off-Island on fiction and nonfiction alike. In my own authoring, I’ve also been able to champion Dena’s art, including having her in my book, “Artistic Visions: The Martha’s Vineyard Museum as Muse,” which features 11 artists who used the dilapidated, pre-renovated 1895 Marine Hospital as inspiration to produce splendid paintings, photographs, video projections, site-specific installations, and performance pieces.
Thinking over our rich lives on the Vineyard today and our collaborations and exchanges in friendship and work, what we know is this: We’ve got plenty of ideas…be on the lookout. We are nowhere near done.