If you’re unfamiliar with the idea read up on it here. This is perfect. By Geoffrey Holstad.
Photos by Ryan Greaves of Cabin-Time. Some more here. Also some recent exchanges:
+ Colin has been working on the video from the second we got home until now, round the clock, and we’ll have it wrapped up this evening, to release as early as tomorrow (Wednesday) morning. It is a 10-min mini-doc; so so good.
We’re all shooting to make it up to Andrew’s opening the weekend of the 14th/15th – are you coming out? Would love to talk to you then! We’ll be in the throws of installing the show at MISC. at this point, so our attendance would only be pending that, but I think we’re right on track. As far as factual (and abstract/conceptual) accounts, we are in the last day or two here of putting together the CT3 Field Guide to be printed and published by Issue Press (currently for sale in NYC, LA, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Minneapolis, and online). George of IP is a great small run art-book publisher.
+ I’m not sure if I can make Andrew’s opening. Paying the piper at work for the time off this summer. Might be able to make it at the end of the month though. Crossing fingers.
I’m super excited about the field guide. I’d love to get my hands on a few for the archive and I bet it will give context to others that come later. After looking at everything that came out of this summer I am absolutely thrilled by the idea that so much happened on the island yet as of yesterday the environment was exactly as we found it. We left little trace. The premise is right on. People are excited about that.
+ Still had a lot left to do Monday in regards to packing up camp. Last time I attempt it alone for sure! Last official night on the island was pretty awesome; it was the most intense heat lightning I’ve ever seen between 6:00 and 7:00am. The whole sky was like a light show. Eventually some very, very heavy rains and a strong southwest wind came into camp and stayed for about 20 minutes. The rain blew at least 9-10 deck boards deep into the shelter, the furthest I’ve ever seen. That wasn’t so rad.
I varnished and installed Miles’ Welcome to Rabbit Island sign Monday. It looks really good. Packing the rest of camp and loading some driftwood onto the boat was some serious work though. A couple of days earlier I was rewarded with beautiful weather and very calm waters. Mary’s windsock and Isabella’s flag were safely and securing packed away, and I also discovered a large patch of sand just 40 yards further out from where we were all swimming at Art’s Coast. I have some underwater video footage of it that I’ll share with ya’ll soon.
I arrived in Marquette around noon today and got right to work at the museum. I moved a bunch of driftwood all the way from Rabbit Bay that will become a sculpture/installation in the museum. Really looking forward to the show but there is a whole lot of work to be done still. It’d be super, super rad if you guys could make it up to the show. It would be an awesome time. I’m going to be heading downstate by the 20th at the latest so I’m really hoping to make your opening as well.
Gawker called the island a few weeks ago. True story. (Article here.) We weren’t too familiar with the subject matter of the journalist’s article–Reddit Island–but talked with him a bit about conservation needing a new model and our experience working on a remote island. Many thanks to Adrian Chen for touching base and keeping the tone of his writing civil.
Blogs are always a crapshoot, after all. For example: Bike Snob. We disagree with his thesis, of course, though do appreciate his critical thinking. At least in theory. It was nice of you to give the island premise a bit of thought, Wildcat Rock Machine, even if we must agree to disagree in the end. We heard you subdivide anyway, so whatever.
by eleni petaloti, july 2012.
These little guys were found on a hike a bit inland from the southern shore of the island by Caleb Larsen. Caleb and his wife Marci visited a few times this summer and brought with them elbow grease, how-to expertise and tons of stories from interesting travels. They also happen to have a great DIY cabin project in the woods just down the road from Rabbit Bay. A few years ago they returned to the Keweenaw Peninsula from a life abroad and since have been building a camp off the grid from the ground up. You name it, they’ve got it–garden, poultry, timber, wood stove, hand-dug well, composting toilet, sauna, furniture. Cool people. Great neighbors. They also serve a mighty fine lunch.
A morning’s work, by Andrew Ranville.
“Art is what you can get away with” is the quip Andy Warhol famously borrowed and exemplified. And while this idea is valid from market and populist perspectives it has far less luster when it is contextualized by the relationship of a work of art–or lack thereof–to an environment larger than the conceptual. Said another way, perhaps, when art moves beyond the context of the native environment it has potential to stray fundamentally from moral relevance. The same can be said for any act of creation/consumption and it could thus be argued that oversized balloon dogs, etc., would be more properly exhibited in aisles of a Walmart (alongside other creations that rarely connect to nature in a thougthful way) than halls of the MoMa. The idea of a creative intention judged in accordance with fundamental native responsibility turns the art world upside down.
