The Wisconsin Project: raft

16.11.12

27.10.12

Found: Greetings from Minocqua, Wisconsin

Found: "M-1-Min-Aqua Bats Water Ski Club by Antigo Card Service Curteich Color® Art-Creation Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. circa 1960

The Min-Aqua Bats still exist claiming to be one of the oldest amateur waterski show teams in the US having chartered in 1952, the same year Tommy Bartlett got his show rolling. The war was over and dare devil stunts were in the air in Wisconsin. Growing up in 1960s Wisconsin around abundant fresh water lakes and with Tommy Bartlett's Water Ski & Jumping Boat Thrill Show going on in nearby Wisconsin Dells, water skiing seemed a cool teenaged thing to do in the summer. After decades of Thrill Show success he owned a chunk of Wisconsin Dells and would be spotted sorting around in a shiny red Porsche. We both remember our cousins water skiing on the lakes where they lived. It looked sufficiently dangerous to us to be pulled behind a motor boat going full-throttle. Our older cousins never offered to teach us and the stray tire inner tube along the shore seemed a saner option for kids in bright orange canvas life jackets.

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.

16.11.12

Cedar Lake with Raft near Manawa, WI

27.10.12

Found: Greetings from Minocqua, Wisconsin