Everyone's riding the whale – an image and idea that struck early in the production of Sponge Exchange and became the ethos driving a totally collaborative exhibition.

All of the students in the Sponge Exchange class with co-teacher John Byrd and TA Maxwell Parker – the "Coastorama Cooperative" – riding an endangered Gulf of Mexico Bryde's Whale, holding sea sponges, the original cooperative (multicellular) organism.

Seventeen students, two teachers and a TA met in my backyard camper studio when the Sponge Exchange class Skyped me in from Richmond – a bit like having diorama class in a diorama. That makes me the diver in the scene, tethered to the little glowing camper, passing a sponge remotely to the folks riding by overhead.