Glen Arbor

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Cottonwood Snowfence, 16 x 20, 2006
Doll's Eyes, 16 x 20, 2006
Pyramid Point, Sleeping Bear, 16 x 20, 2006
Dune Overlook, Sleeping Bear, 16 x 20, 2006
Fishing Boat, Glen Arbor, 16 x 20, 2006
Maple Forest, Empire, 16 x 20, 2006
Right There, 16 x 20, 2006
Thorsen Granary, Sleeping Bear, 16 x 20, 2006

This work came from an artist’s residency in a place very close to my heart, Glen Arbor. The Glen Arbor Art Association gave me two weeks in Glen Arbor, Glen Haven, Leeland, Empire, and of course… Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I grew up in Michigan. This residency brought me back to my childhood. It also produced an installation at Art Center South Florida in the 800 Building’s Large Window Gallery and the 2006 Florida Artist Book Prize for “Right There.” This spot continues to generate images in my head, looking for a space to hold them.

All prints from this series are 16 inches x 20 inches, black on Japanese paper, in an edition of 20.

Right There, an artist’s book

Thirty years of Florida living did not dim the memory of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Actually when I was a kid it was just plain Sleeping Bear Dunes, complete with Dune Rides in great big American Car dune buggies. A residency at Glen Arbor Art Association in 2005 gave me an opportunity to visit the area and recreate the the park and my childhood memories inĀ  this book. “Right There” was the Florida Artist Book Prize winner in 2006 and is now part of the collection at the Bienes Museum of the Modern Book.

Colophon

This book is a tour through time and space, bouncing around the artist’s head, Glen Arbor/ Glen Haven, Michigan, and the early 1960’s. Much of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has remained unchanged. Memories however may have become better with the passage of time. The book’s covers are basswood, planed, sanded and tied together with leather thongs. The cover art is laser etched into the wood, front and back covers of each chapter. The papers used are Thai Unryu and Arches Cold Press Watercolor 300 and 140 lbs. The book was created in Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Pagemaker 7.0. The font used is Americana. “Right There” has seven chapters, and when closed creates a block approximately 10 inches wide, 12.5 inches tall, and 10 inches deep. A custom denim bag is included for transportation. Each chapter contains one woodcut print, one C-print, one digital scan, and one essay by the artist. The book is an edition of five. The photographs were taken at a residency at Glen Arbor Art Association/ Sleeping Bear Dunes in summer 2004. The toy images, woodcut prints, and book itself were produced in 2006. The essays are semi-accurate memories of the artist’s childhood growing up in Michigan during the 1960’s.