Some images of new work from International art project, Jan - Feb 2011.

Buddha Enlightened 2-be. Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India.

Images:

1. A flag poem for water. (in Hindi). Anna Macleod and Carol Hummel. India 2011.

2. Paani Bachao!. ( Save Water!) Poster project across Northern India. Anna Macleod and Carol Hummel 2010 - 2011.

3. Water Bodies and Spirits. Anna Macleod. India 201. Discursive sculpture,mobile water shrine.

The long lost bio...

One year ago I moved from the wide-open plains of Wyoming to the dense urban environment of New York City to pursue an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons the New School for Design. I have a couple weeks left of the first year, and I'm excited to finally get this bio up and running after reading about everyone else below! Here is a little bit of context:

At some point in high school a friend and I hatched a plan to hike a mountain with hammocks in hand. I found it paradoxical that hammocks were relegated to backyards when they were much more enjoyable hanging over creeks, on mountainsides or on next to a lake. Since then, I have been curious about figuring out new uses for resources people take for granted or simply overlook.

While studying at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in upstate New York, I found tremendous purpose in using discarded resources to create artwork. I was enthralled to justify being creative by using garbage and sought to inspire others to do the same. The solution was a free-in free-out material reuse program housed in a shipping container dubbed ‘RePo’. It still diverts about eight tons of usable materials away from the landfill every year, back into a cycle of creative reuse.

After graduating I flirted with Colorado, and was a resident with Colorado Art Ranch in Steamboat Springs, and later interned at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. After the work ended I moved back to Jackson, Wyoming and convinced a start up non-profit called the Center of Wonder to employ me as the Public Art Ambassador. My goal was to raise the awareness of the benefits public art provides and begin work on a public art master plan for the community.

During my two-year fellowship I created participatory projects with and for the community. In the background I explained the intricacies of public art policy with elected officials. The final public project was titled ‘Vertical Orchestra’, which transformed a ski lift into a musical carousel of live musicians playing to an audience relaxing in hammocks slung up in trees along the slope.

The Hardrock Revision opportunity is especially exciting to see how 'transdisciplinary collaboration' is defined outside the program of study I am engaged in. This is going to be an interesting adventure, and I will come with a couple extra hammocks in hand.

Regarding Community Involvement

I agree very much with Lydia's comment, that to listen is the best way to reach an understanding with people.

As a landscape architect I have found that communities all have specific differences, and general similarities.

In general:
1. Individuals within a community don't all agree with each other.
2. They want to have their say, and to be taken account of in decisions.
3. They know lots about where they live that we don't know.

The most successful projects I have worked on were the ones where we began without prejudice. That is to say, we deliberately kept our own ideas and wishes and opinions out of the way until we had gained an understanding of what local people told us.

In 'The Fairytale of Burscough Bridge' we began for several weeks by asking local people
1. what they thought of their town
2. what other people thought of their town
3. the best bits about their town
4. the worst bits    etc....

One of the most important things was allowing people to see that there were significantly differing opinions within the community. There was not one magic solution which would please everyone living there, we tried to get them thinking about each other's opinions. We simultaneously did extensive research into the area, following leads given to us by local people. Once we understood how people felt about where they lived, and were able to suggest solutions involving bits of their own history that even they didn't know, it seemed that we'd gained their trust.

In another project, BCAL entered a competition where the community would vote for the winner following a presentation. All the other entrants showed images and plans of how the place would look once the project was finished. BCAL gave out postcards and asked people to return them to us with their memories and thoughts about their place, we got the commission in the end.

Once we arrive in Lake City I would like to meet, and listen to, as many people as possible. I find it always feels a bit scary to not be producing ideas and 'stuff' as soon as possible, but I believe it's better.

Some practical suggestions...

Opinions/stories/ideas in written or video (or some other recorded form that is as little mediated as possible) would be a great resource for us when we arrive.

Tapping into pre-existing groups (sports/social/professional) and meeting them. Allowing those who are most interested/committed to find us. That way involvement can trickle up!

Meeting different groups separately, then all groups together later.

Asking the community to consider how others, both within and outside their community, view the situation.



I don't know what anyone else thinks, but I'd be interested to hear.

Linda

I am really looking forward to meeting, hanging out and working with all of you! I am not sure how to begin. I live in Portland Oregon, teach part-time at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), garden, do yoga, hike and make art. Cooking and red wine also play a part in my life. I am married and have 2 step daughters and a fabulous grown daughter …. who spent a summer at Dartmouth and is now in DC. With an aunt in Maine I occasionally go to Arcadia National Park during the summer. For money, I teach contemporary art history (I know that sounds like an oxymoron … think art since 1945) but my professional practice is studio art. I mostly make Public Art and Art in Public. So I have worked on large collaborative projects that involve landscape architects and engineers, as well as, temporary and unofficial things like my most recent midnight poster project Look Up. These posters sprung from my anger at a Coal Power Plant that continues to release mercury into our air and the green washing done the local power company.

My work in very interdisciplinary and often involves moving heavy objects. The primary focus is the interface between natural and built systems. I have a long history of collaboration with a video artist Pamela Chipman. One of my favorite joint projects is Beneath Our Feet. We filmed the inside a huge sewer pipe that went under the Willamette River and then continued through various neighborhood. We made a video and projected it on a large outdoor screen in parks, empty lots and schools along the route. I hope Lydia will be interested in looking at BOF.

The experience that I always carry with me is the years I worked as a union carpenter. After getting a MA in Art History at the University of Maryland (I grew up along the Chesapeake Bay), I lived 2 years in West Virginia (mining community) and then moved to the west coast. As a struggling artist in Portland, I decided to try something completely different and enrolled in the Carpenters Apprentice program. All of a sudden I was building bridges and high rises – plus welding, rigging cranes and climbing up 30’ walls with 25 lbs bolts. It took me 5 years to get through the 4 year program but I made it and became a “journey man”.

My experience of the thrills and dangers involved in high stakes work changed by life and my art for ever. It also led to a series of installations and performances called “Art at Work”.

I have not worked as a hard hat for many years but I continue to have admiration for the men and women who labor at unsung jobs. Now I do more urban planning. My current project is helping to design an urban green street.

Packing List for Team Members

Hello,

I'm Peggy Lawless, the co-founder (with Grant) of Colorado Art Ranch and I'm looking forward to meeting everyone on the team. I won't be going to Lake City with you, but I will be there for the Artposium.

Be prepared for changeable weather. In the mountains, it's possible to wear shorts, a raincoat, and a down jacket in the same day. Summer temperatures in Lake City range from the low 40s to highs in the 60s to low 80s Farenheit. The sunshine is intense at an elevation of 8600 feet and Colorado's climate is dry, so it's important to drink LOTS of water. Staying hydrated is especially important at high elevations to prevent high-altitude sickness.

Following are some suggestions for packing:

Daypack

Water bottle

Hiking boots and non-cotton socks

Sunscreen Camera (optional)

Binoculars (optional)

Notebooks or sketchbooks and pens

Raingear (afternoon thunderstorms are common)

Sunglasses

Hat and gloves

Layers (e.g., fleece or wool jacket, windbreaker, vest)

Bathing suit (Lake San Cristobal is nearby)

If you're driving to Colorado, please bring camping equipment if you have it. We will also provide tents, a cooking stove, and sleeping bags for those who are flying in.

Warm regards,

Peggy

Hannah Fries

Hello, fellow teammates. Good to read a little about you all! I am very much looking forward to our time together this summer. I am a poet and, for the last six years, an editor at ORION magazine in Great Barrington, MA, which is in the Berkshire hills in the far western part of the state. It's a beautiful spot to be, with an amazing focus on local farms and food. I grew up in New Hampshire, though, where I also attended college (Dartmouth) and majored in English and minored in music (French horn, though I'm now trying to learn fiddle...), while also dipping into organic farming. Before I landed at Orion, I interned at The Frost Place center for poetry and the arts in Franconia, NH, and worked briefly at the University Press of New England. I started as an intern at Orion and am now associate editor and poetry editor. I also recently finished an MFA in poetry through the low-residency program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.

Orion has been a perfect fit for me in many ways, particularly for its combination of artfulness and urgency expressed through writing and visual art concerned with the intersections of nature and culture. (If you haven't yet, you may like to check out the article by Erik Reece on AMD&Art.) I have always been drawn to interdisciplinary projects and enjoy looking for connections between ways of thinking, figuring out how to shift perspective to get a larger picture of the whole.

My favorite place, and the place that feels most like home to me, is the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I love hiking, gardening, cross-country skiing, identifying trees and flowers and birds, and jumping in cold mountain streams. I think they have some of those in Colorado.

Here's the gorgeous elm tree at the top of the hill where I live:

Community Involvement

This project would be extremely easy if all we had to do was gather a group of brilliant artists, give them facts (or perceived facts), and let them percolate ideas. The challenging part is the community. The future of the Ute Ulay Mine is entwined with their own. For every supporter there will be a detractor (maybe not quite that ratio). I've alway appreciated the Chinese dragon symbol which stands for both danger and opportunity. To me, that is what the community is. I want them to be well served, help arrive at workable options, listen to them, have them involved, an reassure them. In that poorly constructed sentence lies the dragon. My work between now and July 15 will mostly be about engaging the community so that we are not a bunch of outsiders telling them what to do. Ok. now you know my fears.

The last week of April I will be going to Lake City to meet with: Editor of the paper, Chamber of Commerce, County Commissioners, educators, and others. Of course, that is just a beginning and these folks enjoy their own challenges of trust within the community. How best to have involvement trickle down to a community that we don't live in?

I welcome ideas you may have on how to engage the community before, during and after Hardrock Revision.

Lydia

Hi, you all.

I’m a visual artist and media maker based in Virginia. Much of my work revolves around landscape and history. Before getting a graduate degree in studio practice, I worked and lived in Appalachian Kentucky where I taught community documentary production to high school students and other folks in the coalfields. That experience provides me with some understanding of the issues that affect mining communities, although I’m sure every place is different.

I live out in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and occasionally venture in to town to teach in the art department at the University of Virginia where I direct the new media program. For better or for worse, most of my art making happens on the computer now (more about that here). Alternately, I secretly dream of living off the grid and last year completed a certification in permaculture design. My hobbies include chopping wood and attempting to grow things.

I’m excited about this project and looking forward to meeting you all out West.

Julia

Hello everyone,

I'm so excited to be doing this project in Colorado this summer as the team's cultural historian. I'm 28 and I live in Montreal, Quebec. I grew up in a very small town in northern Vermont, and I have a lifelong affection for the concerns of small towns. I did my BA in History & Literature, focusing on landscape, environment, and indigenous issues. I wrote my thesis about railroad development and the mythology of the West. I spent three years in Vermont working on small-town public history projects and getting to know the non-academic side of things.

I've been in Montreal for two years now -- I'm also a musician, and this is a good place to be for that -- and I'll be starting a Masters program in History at McGill here in the fall. I'm embarking on an academic career, but I want to do so while remaining involved in the current issues of communities, which I think are often very bound up in the tasks of understanding their own pasts, held in thrall to various old myths and images of what places mean. I'm also very excited to be collaborating with artists, something I hope to do more and more in the long term.

I'm hoping to get to do some hiking and swimming while in Lake City!

Julia

Becky - My Life So Far

Hello everyone!

Hexhamshire in Northumberland

 As a child playing by the stream and in the woods in rural Northumberland I studied the natural world. After leaving school I went overseas. There I got my first horticultural work and experience of different landscapes – city, desert, ocean, and mountains. In an attempt to develop a career I did a course in linguistics. Half way through I realised that I wanted to find work related to horticulture – I finished the course and thought lots about innate human patterning. Next I became a horticulturist, working on estates, private gardens,  a wonderful nursery and a city-centre community garden project. Finally, I discovered landscape architecture which offered me the chance to incorporate many of my interests into a varied and interesting whole.

I spent six years working with my wonderful colleagues at BCAL on various projects [angel field, drift park, cockermouth, burscough, garden of light...], whilst simultaneously teaching at manchester metropolitan university [MMU]. Two years ago I became a senior lecturer in landscape architecture, and am now focussing on that.

Angel Field by BCAL

I'm looking forward to Hardrock Revision and to meeting you all. I hope to develop new ways of collaborating and to find common enthusiasms and surprising inspirations.

Last Monday I went to see a talk by the Office for Subversive Architecture here in Manchester. I loved their playful approach to projects, especially the vertical car park. And if anyone can find their accompanying text in English I'd appreciate it...

Anwohnerpark Cologne by OSA

I am a visual artist based in Ireland. I live in rural north west Ireland, 20 miles from the coast of the Atlantic at Sligo Bay. I lecture in the Fine Art Department at the Dublin Institute of Technology ( D.I.T) during the week traveling back and forth every three days. My studio is located at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre in Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim, an artist led initiative that has been developed over 17 or so years and is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland. www.leitrimsculpturecentre.ie.

I have shown my work internationally since the early 1990's, participating in symposia, artist organised events and artist curated shows. I have a website that is in dire need of updating but gives a whistle stop tour of selected projects, updates will be forthcoming very soon! ( Easter holidays are near!) www.annamacleod.com.

My interest in the Hardrock Revision project stems from my interest in landscape and the (mis)uses of the resources of the land. I understand landscape as a cultural construction and have a keen interest in post-colonial readings of land. I am very interested in collaboration and have some ideas for interventions at the Ute Ule mine site.

Grant Pound Background

I first graduated in Wildlife Biology from U of Mich and have worked with coyotes, sage grouse, pygmy rabbits, and prairie dogs. Then I was incarcerated in a laboratory working on immuno-toxicology. While working on my masters (Effects of Selenium on the Immune System of Mus musculus) I discovered the joy of design and switched to the department of Art and Architecture at U of Idaho. I worked in Minneapolis for 18 years as a graphic designer and then moved to Colorado and floundered until starting Colorado Art Ranch in 2005.

Married to Peggy Lawless whom I met at Wildlife Camp.
Two kids: Blake 27, and Alex 25

I will be your facilitator. My job is to keep things moving and stay out of the way (I think). I started this project three years ago.