Christa Forster and Laura Lark met in 1990 at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program while working on their MFAs—Christa in poetry, Laura in fiction. After they graduated and continued living their individual lives in Houston, Texas, both evolved into interdisciplinary artists: they kept writing, but Christa turned toward theater, performance and music, and Laura moved into the visual arts, fashion and film.

In 2009, they co-founded the Indiana Street Writers Group along with several other Houston-based writers. For more than a decade, the ISWG has met monthly (pre-pandemic in Lark’s Montrose-neighborhood home; post-pandemic in Forster’s Zoom room) to support one another’s work. As a result of this consistent years-long engagement, Forster and Lark’s friendship, admiration and respect for one another has continued to grow.

In this their ongoing, interdisciplinary project, Are You Content? (commencing in 2021), Forster and Lark use analogue avatars (dolls), writing, visual media, and performance (IRL and via social media) to explore identity—its construction, mutability, transience and permanence. Through interrogating content and contentedness, they play towards balance, structure, generation, and connection, and they investigate and challenge the mechanics of a sustainable collaboration. 

Laura Lark (left) and Christa Forster (right) at 3-D Envision Printing in Spring, Texas, June 2021.