artist statement

A favorite artist statement of mine by a fellow mackinac island artist, kate levy...

My photographic anthem to Mackinac is ignited by the ironic dialogue between past and present unfolding on this island. Here, as most places have, has seen a plethora of histories altered and mixed through time’s tilling. It is through this lens that I investigate island residents, unexpected landscapes and unique truth-bending narratives.

Versions of Ojibwe folklore reveres the island as the birthplace of man, as well as the earthly home of creator god Gitchee Manitou. Now, tourist-pilgrims visit the island daily to immerse themselves in historical reenactments-- one-dimensional attempts to revive an obscure utopian time. Like a land of ghosts repeating the same patterns over and over, the island seems a half-empty reminder of what may or may not have happened, once upon a time. Instead, one finds the energy of what always is, fully intact, growing out of the cracks of our attempts to re-create it.

Mackinac Island: Early French Fur Trade, War of 1812, Victorian Japonism, Chippewa legend all arriving today. Generations of men who moved invisible glaciers materialize as a replenishing series of eyes. Tour guides sing ever-changing myth to ponchos, tshirts and jackets respectively. Thick blue trash bags, Varney hotel rooms and the eyebags of summer employees gradually fill. Fake indian paraphernalia rides horseback beside toy rifles the size of shipwrecks. Poets, alcoholics, boy scouts, bugalists, guitarists, politicians, summer cottagers. Transient home. Winter. Life exists through all seasons.