The Wisconsin Project: Found: The Gem Room, Blue Mounds, WI

23.9.13

Found: The Gem Room, Blue Mounds, WI

Found: The Gem Room, North Cave, Opened in 1946,
Cave of the Mounds, Blue Mounds, Wisconsin.
25 Miles West of Madison, Wis. on Highway 18-151,
Curteich, Chicago, C.T. Art-Colortone, circa 1940s

Little blonde girl wearing red coat and saddle shoes points to rock formations on this postcard promoting Cave of the Mounds. A performative photographic ploy to direct viewer attention in a vast dark space. Cave of the Mounds is often referred to as the "jewel box of America's major caves because of the variety, color and delicacy of its formations,"in tourist materials. The Cave was discovered on August 4, 1939 on a Wisconsin farm during a blasting session to mine limestone... eventually becoming a tourist attraction with spaces with names like Painted Waterfall, Gem Room, and Dream River Room. Hosting millions of visitors with a gift shop, hiking trails, and Prairie and Savanna Restoration Gardens, the land formation acts as spectacle like nearby Wisconsin Dells.

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THE WISCONSIN PROJECT

Our research-driven Wisconsin Project contemplates the rooted-ness and state-of-mind resulting from inhabiting a single place, our native Wisconsin, for a long time. Through critiquing postcard views both made and found, we learn a great deal about past and present Wisconsin. We began making postcard views of the places immediately around our studio and on our drives around Wisconsin in about 2008. We use the vintage postcard film format and print the cards in palladium and cyanotype. By communicating details of a specific place, seeming to register only marginally on the national radar, the project seeks to bring audiences into a Wisconsin mental space. Some in the art world would argue that the Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, makes for banal “fly over” subject matter. Our project challenges that by finding meaning in the ordinary and inviting audiences to examine, dialog, and reflect on the particular emotional quality of the idiosyncrasies of place and the perceptions of those both inside and outside of it. Sometimes distant memories are involved and a longing for a time now gone. Wisconsin’s glacier inflected landscape and proximity to the Great Lakes creates an exotic arena for living that informs our project. The life cycle plays out and rural and urban ruins serve as monuments to existences as people, places, and ideas surface then vanish. Ultimately, we aim to grapple with complex perceptions of Wisconsin ranging from nostalgic, romantic, and idealized--as depicted on myriad real photo postcard and standard tourist postcards--to mysterious, dark, and Gothic as conveyed in works of art and literature such as Michael Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip" book and Werner Herzog's "Stroszek" film. The project culminated in a residency with workshops and community collaborations and the installation "We Go From Where We Know" at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center 10.13.2013-3.7.2014 and later the Harvestore Bandshell for Fermentation Fest in 10.2014. The blog continues the exploration of postcards.