Art + Athletics

     I feel like I have never had an imagination. Growing

     up, I lived in the present, unable to escape reality with

     fantasies or make-believe games. Instead I explored

     the world with simple questions: constantly analyzing

     and observing to the point of obsession. With a distance

     that borders on solitude and physical non-interaction, I

     am unattached to the realities of the every day, allowing

     myself the freedom to re-organize and re-present

     information. 

Time on Rabbit Island in the summer of 2012 will be spent settling into an ongoing

personal obsession entitled Building the Ocean – in essence, the process of creating

and constructing a very large expanse. The expanse that I aim to represent is water:

its colours, subtle movements, forms, sounds and my own experiences within it as an avid

swimmer. Documenting the vast waterscape of Lake Superior through a collection of

photographs, drawings and written observations with a simplistically minimal approach,

I will then take these captured moments and utilize a variety of natural, man-made and

hand-made elements to assemble individual pieces. Collectively I will create, or build,

my own re-imagined ocean in both two and three dimensions. 

Influencing my affinity for the water is a passion for long distance lake swimming.

As someone who has grown up jumping into lakes in the Pacific Northwest, I have

continued to swim and compete in open water events across northern California with

USMS for over eight years. In the few weeks that I will spend on Rabbit Island, I will

continue to train for an upcoming 10k swim on Lake Willoughby in Vermont. The silence

and emptiness of being on the island will allow me to prepare mentally, with a calm

relentlessness that allows distance swimmers to approach the race unemotionally, which

in the end conserves mental and physical energy. Altogether I am absolutely thrilled with

the opportunity to be in a location that allows for the experience of water both athletically

and artistically. - Sara Marcell Maynard

* Sara Marcell Maynard is a graduate of California College of the Arts in Oakland and currently lives in the Bay Area. She is a competitive open water swimmer and her proposed Art + Athletics fits nicely as we get things up and running on the island. We’re excited to have her out. She might be the only person we don’t have to take back to land by boat.