These pieces are informed by my participation in the New Zealand international artists collaborations (CollaboratioNZ), which I strive to be a part of as often as possible. It all started in 2010, when I heard that they were accepting applications from interested artists for the 2011 event. Having never heard of these collaborations before, I emailed two New Zealand woodturners that I knew, asking them what it was about. They both gave me a similar rundown about how artists of various skillsets are brought together to create mixed-media pieces of art. They also said "if you go, it will change your art". Well, it did, as do the other collabs that I participate in worldwide. These pieces represent an abstraction of the Maori "grimace" that I observed in many of their carvings, but also a reflection of how that first collab changed my art.