Source: Paul Pfeiffer

Morning After the Deluge, still
2003
Projector, DVD player, DVD
Projection: 12' x 16', loop length 20 minutes
Courtesy the artist and The Project, New York

Related Links

BLUE SKY PROJECT

KAZ'S WEBSITE

KAZ'S BLUE SKY BLOG

AVANT GUARDIANS: TEXTLETS ON ART AND ECOLOGY
by Linda Weintraub

Blue Sky Project: Leelanau

PROJECT ARTIST: Kaz McCue, Resident Artist - Blue Sky Project 2011

 
PROPOSAL: This proposal entails setting up a collaborative project with students from The Leelanau School in Glen Arbor, Michigan for the purpose of creating a work or works for the Blue Sky Film/Video/New Media Festival. The plan is to create at least one video piece based the natural environment of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The number of pieces and the length of each will be determined through the process of collaboration with a maximum of three pieces with a total run time of thirty minutes for all works combined.

 
LOGISTICS: The project will take place in the studios of The Leelanau School with approximately half a dozen students ranging in age from 15 to 18 years old. The project will occur as a component of the school’s five-week winter term, running from the first week of January in to the middle of February, and students will be involved from 1:00-3:30pm, Monday through Friday. While students are taking this as a class, the project will be set up just like the summer Blue Sky program with the intention of providing a unique opportunity for me to further my work while creating an opportunity for participating teens to be engaged in a professional, creative experience and to gain insight into creative practice.

 
PROCESS:

Phase One: This project will begin with an orientation to the Blue Sky Project and collaboration. As part of the orientation, the group will investigate and research the subject of “art and the environment” as well as exploring contemporary film/video/new media works. We will also be working from Linda Weintraub’s series of writings entitled “Avant-Guardians,” which looks at how contemporary artists work with various topics within the subjects of art and ecology.
 
Phase Two: After the group’s preliminary investigation, we will begin the process of brainstorming. In this phase we will specify our subject(s) and develop a focus for the work. We will also look at some existing raw materials that could be used or which could serve as inspiration for future work.

Phase Three: Shooting and the creation of raw materials for project development and editing.

Phase Four: Production and finishing.

Activities and outcomes: As part of the process, we will provide a screening of the finished product(s) during a school assembly and will also try to screen the finished works publically in the Leelanau/Traverse City areas. In addition, depending on schedule, I would like to bring the group to Dayton for the Festival.

 
BACKGROUND: 

Blue Sky Project is one of the most unique programs I have encountered both in terms of artistic opportunity and youth interaction. Initially, this program was an opportunity for me to return to my studio practice in earnest after spending many years as an educator, curator and arts administrator. What happened over the course of my eight weeks with Blue Sky Project turned out to be so much more than I had expected.

The biggest challenge for me in terms of my project and the collaboration of my project was to not be a teacher, so I focused on really infusing my personality into our collaborative studio. This is an important part of my own practice but it also helped me to engage my youth participants in a way that I could not have done as a teacher. As an artist, I consider myself a storyteller so my personality is a big part of establishing the artistic attitude of my work. I like to work with intensity and to have fun, and I think our collaborative studio fulfilled both of these requirements. In the end, I realized that as I was trying to reconnect with my own creative expression, I was also connecting my kids to it as well. On an individual level, I love to challenge myself through my work, but in this situation, it was really fun to challenge the whole group. The final result was a group of works that were bigger and more ambitious than the way I typically work and, indeed, a group of works that I could not have created on my own.

The collaborative nature of this program also taught me a lot about my own practice and the way in which I work. I feel as though I am able to stay connected to myself and to the world around me through my work. In this respect, it was difficult to open up my studio practice for others because there is “stuff” that happens in the studio that no one typically gets to be a part of or see. Having seven people staring back at you when some of that “stuff” happens took some getting used to but most of the time, those seven people were interested and supportive (and sometimes critical) of my ideas as they were developing. That vulnerability and that interaction also created an avenue for thoughts and ideas to flow and, as the project grew, I realized that I was connecting to the world around my through my youth participants and they were connecting to the world through me.

Because of this incredibly positive experience, I was extremely excited by the opportunity to recreate the energy and collaborative spirit of the summer residency. Now, instead of telling my colleagues and students at the Leelanau School about my Blue Sky experience, I can share it with them first hand. While the project group will be defined by enrollment in the class, we will have all of the resources of the faculty and the Leelanau School at our disposal from equipment and facilities (like the observatory) to research opportunities to collaboration with others outside of the project. In addition, I am really looking forward to extending my work in video and new media, exploring the areas of time and motion in my own work, and hope to be able to build on the video that I created this summer in collaboration with Sarah Mitchell and her group.