Thank you for revisiting our project as it develops (I've been in touch with Jennifer Raymond, who encouraged us to reapply.)
Every Summer, we meet on the land, (We are now calling it the Visitor's Center, because the building that we rebuilt that started the endeavor was the old Visitor's Center at the Forest Service Entrance in the Ottawa National Forest). We have been able to slowly add a small barn, picnic tables, and two small sheds. We learned that the clay on the land is workable, so we have been testing it to make it usable. We found a kiln at a garage sale and repaired it, so we can fire ceramics. Everything we have been doing, we have been self funding, so it has been moving slowly, but steadily from year to year.
We are ready to invite artists from around the country, as well as local residents of the U.P. to come to the land and take part in our DIY Sustainable Adventure Art Symposium in August 2014! It will be a rugged symposium; artists will live in tents, cook and shower outside, and will be challenged to make work outside their comfort zones.
We will be offering workshops, using what we have available to make work. Right now, we are designing two workshops, clay processing (working with the clay from the land and doing raku firing outdoors) and metal casting (anyone from the community can bring aluminum cans and we will be melting them down and pouring molds). Artists can also work outside the workshops, painting, etc. We will be organizing an art show in the closest town (Ewen, population 200) and evenings where each person can present their work.
Every morning we will work together on collective projects, working to add to the land for future summers. Our first collective projects will be to build the outdoor show and walls to the latrine, both of which we will be using during the symposium.