Establishing Collaborative Dialogue: The Mentor and the Apprentice

Abstract

Abstract This essay shares observations and insights about principles of mentoring in the form of five individual recollections about our experiences with our mentor and dissertation advisor, Graeme Sullivan. Dialogue 1 focuses on the historical and cultural antecedents of the mentor-mentee relationship, whereas dialogue 2 highlights the rich potential of teaching and learning, and that the potential to see things from new perspectives is ever present. Dialogue 3 describes the mentor-mentee relationship that deepened with the idea of intellectual rigor and play, risk and experiment, the practice of art making and the happenstance of serendipity within the context of the research act. Dialogue 4 offers examples of reflexivity in two forms, methodological and interpretive, and argues that it becomes the meta—modus operandi of the relationship among doctoral student/artist, dissertation advisor, and dissertation art practice/research. The concluding dialogue focuses on the language of possibility in mentoring, which shapes the research process and transforms both mentee and mentor. These reflections can also be seen within the spirit of an open dialogue and collaborations between us as our mentor continues to reach us, allowing us to seed the fields we have settled in and as we generate our own reincarnations.