I’ve begun work on an ambitious long-term project aiming to capture Northern Michigan’s beautiful and complex landscapes in words, visual artwork, and music.
The scope of the project is to explore and highlight these beloved locations while raising awareness for ongoing conservation efforts and inspiring both new and return visitors. The project would further explore how visual artists and composers approach the same subjects through differing perspectives and modes of expression.
Music is sound organized within the medium of time. A painter organizes light through the medium of color. Music is both ethereal ephemeral; it’s ultimately a temporal medium. Meanwhile, an artist’s painting is both a visual and physical expression which can evoke the ephemeral or be directly representational.
Since an artist and a composer both use language to describe their creations in terms of lightness, darkness, colors, emotions, etc., it would be a beautiful, meaningful challenge to explore where both art forms inevitably overlap. Through collaboration we can explore and demonstrate how the combination of two or more art forms can create a powerful, immersive experience for an audience.
To fully embark on this project, I will need to collaborate with visual artists who will immerse themselves in the same preserves, take the same hikes, and create artwork based on the unique aspects that impressed and inspired them. Meanwhile, I will compose music depicting scenes or finite details within the preserve, outlining the contrast of seasons, or perhaps telling the narrative of an entire hiking excursion.
As a fundamental part of this project, I and the artist(s) would journal about our journeys while taking photos and noting our impressions and our personal artistic process. The sharing of these personal writings and images will enhance the depth of collaboration while providing even more materials to enhance the exhibits and concerts resulting from the project.
Subject:
National Parks, State Parks, and Nature Preserves within Northwestern Lower Michigan.
Prospective Collaborators:
Any artist is welcome to complete the Collaborating Artist Survey
Project Duration:
Ongoing
J.T. McKinney 