THE MT. BALDY EXPEDITION
2004-2010 (In collaboration with James Barry)
Ch. 2: Preparations
Ch. 3: The Shop
Ch. 4: Building and Set-backs
Ch. 5: Conclusion
In 2004, while both studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, James Barry and I began a collaborative, mixed media project titled The Mt. Baldy Expedition. The project's structure was that of a journey of exploration in which we set out to build a sailing dinghy, sail it across Lake Michigan to Mt. Baldy, a sand dune in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and return to share our findings with the world.
The Mt. Baldy Expedition burgee, Artifact, 2004
Throughout the six-year project, Jim and I continually communicated our activities by creating and exhibiting a series of "mini-projects" designed to act as an invitation to others to participate in the wonder, romance and adventure of commonplace exploration. These projects took, at times, both a serious and tongue-in-cheek form and included photographic series of the Chicago lakefront, bird watching and plant identification; lectures on the history of exploration and its ties to contemporary globalization, the history of contemporary and historic boat building materials, and workshops on knot tying and the history of rope; illustrations such as a paper boat pattern of our expeditionary sailing dinghy and various artifacts and objects associated with the construction of the boat. We began publishing a blog, The Push Forward Chronicles, soon into the project to relay stories of our progress.
"We have become so caught up in reading stories such as this that we deem it reasonable and necessary, both for our own sake and as a service to our society, to become explorers and engage in everything we have read explorers engage in. For that reason, we are setting out on a voyage of discovery we have titled The Mt. Baldy Expedition."
- The Mt. Baldy Expedition Announcement Lecture, Dogmatic Gallery, March 6, 2004
