THE MM’S WESTERN DRIVE AND KELLEN WALKER’S ‘WESTERN DRIVE’
As I make my drive westwards, I’ve arranged to work collaboratively with a few artists in my known network. None of the work will make me money – in fact I’m spending money to make the work.
The notion to conduct a mobile artist-in-residency within the context of The Mobile Mill studio has been around since the project’s conception in 2013, though I’m just now starting to actually toy around with what ‘mobile residency’ could be for others.
The first stab at this idea actually took place early on in my traveling papermaking journey. Chicago artist Maggie Puckett agreed to co-teach a series of public workshops with me at 31st Street Beach in Chicago. We worked for free for the Chicago Park District, providing teaching-artist services to summer campers aged 4-12 as part of the CPD’s ‘Sandtastic’ programming. The opportunity to partner with the city came at a crucial time in regards to MM curriculum development: I was learning what The Mobile Mill could do and be. I was figuring out what I was doing by just doing it.
Maggie and I worked together to create ‘eco-art’ themed curriculum for four days of hand papermaking at the sandy Lake Michigan beach. We collected prairie grasses along the Lake Shore Drive bike path that were then cooked and beaten for pulp material. We also used Maggie’s collection of onion skins to create ‘stinky onion’ paper, made paper from lake seaweed and beat the fiber on-site in the Critter Hollander, and pulled sheets of handmade paper made entirely from paper waste found in the city streets. By the end of the week, we had made hundreds of handmade papers with young Chicagoans. While this ended up being more of a co-teaching process rather than a full-on mobile artist residency, Maggie did end up producing an twelve-foot long artists’ book from the papers that were made at the beach as a commentary on socio-economic inequalities across Chicago.
The project legs have gotten stronger since that summer in Chicago, and my idea for the mobile residency has clarified to some extent. What I’d like to happen within a MM mobile residency: I (as conductor/proprietor of The Mobile Mill) pair up with an artist interested in creating an artwork that utilizes the portable paper studio; I drive the studio to a working location(s) chosen by the artist; I set up the studio for use at said location and slip into the role of a studio technician slash production artist. Within this framework, I assist the artist-in-residence in the accomplishment of their special project in hand papermaking (be it with or without the public; in a private or public setting).
Fast-forward three years and I’m pulling into a dirt parking spot at Campsite #96 in Lake Whitney State Park, about two hours south of Fort Worth, Texas. I drove five hundred and forty five miles to be here, fresh off a teaching appointment at Tulane University in New Orleans. A nine-hour drive doesn’t seem so long after months of driving, but it certainly feels stretched out when you’re anticipating an upcoming experiment like the one I’d set out to do with artist Kellen Walker, a writer-director-performer I first met during graduate schooling at Columbia College Chicago.
I drove up to this lake to meet up with Kellen and give the latest mobile residency idea a try. Kellen had phoned me just two months prior to this campground meet-up with a loosely arranged idea for a site-specific performance and a potential execution venue in San Antonio. The timing was spot on, and we agreed on the aim to fuse my Mobile Mill workshop format with Kellen’s current research of essential oils and homemade perfumes.
Our work was self-funded; we both committed to taking a leap for the sake of collaborative experimentation. At best, if all failed project wise we would at least have some hangout time together by a campfire. That said, what made this work most possible was its convenient location: we worked in Kellen’s home state of Texas, and I’d be passing through town on my way home west from the MM southeastern road-trip tour.
The third player involved in this production is Faith Haddad, owner and creative director of HAUS Collective in San Antonio, Texas. A relative stranger to Kellen and I, we were connected to Faith via an email exchange. Faith put her faith in us – offering to host our artistic endeavor through HAUS Collective. This exchange in itself is a sort of radical take on the notion of the traditional gallery owner providing wall space for an artwork. Faith thought up, pursued, and secured a fitting public venue for the performance: the historic Guenther Flour Mill, a historic site along the San Antonio River.
What many people might not know about conducting art-work in the public is that most cities require a person to have a permit to perform. In the case of The Mobile Mill, I (or my sponsor) have always received permission to set up the paper studio in the public realm. This is primarily done out of respect, but it is also the right way to go as I cannot afford to pay a police ticket. In the process of seeking out approval for non-profit public work, I tend to wonder if it’s actually necessary. Is what I’m doing so different from a watercolor painter setting up their easel along a city canal for live painting? Do they need a permit to work? What about a group of musicians sitting around in a circle playing acoustic instruments in a park space? How about a person doing solo tai chi on the lawn out front of city hall? Do any of these people need permits to do what they do? Such creative activities are actions that could bring us peace but could also disturb the peace, depending on how you see it.
Back at the lake, Kellen and I set up camp and found ourselves with about twenty-four hours to figure out what product she wanted to make via the Mobile Mill studio and to sketch out our San Antonio collaborative performance. Working within the framework of an existing project entitled ‘Western Drive’, Kellen arrived with materials she’d sourced from her childhood lake house in Texas including lake water, prairie grasses, homemade bath salts, and essential oils. Kellen uses scent as an artistic medium. We landed on the idea of producing handmade paper blotters that could be used to sample plant-derived scents and dyes that she’d produced – all of which, according to Kellen, ‘smell of a certain place, biology, or era’.
We ran several tests to determine proper paper weight and color, preparing pulp and pulling sheets on-site, as well as drying samples on a sheet of aluminum placed above our campfire. We settled on a final formula, working into the dark of night and finally completing the edition by breakfast time. Our whirlwind making session at the campground definitely raised some neighboring eyebrows.
Papers, pulps, dyes packed up, we took off for San Antonio, executing an amazing interdisciplinary public event the following morning wherein Kellen would premier her ‘1351′ perfume. This free-to-participate performance included a tea tasting, a ritual community water-gathering, hand papermaking demonstrations, natural dye instruction, scent sampling, and ‘Western Drive’ story-telling.
Taking a leap worked out. The cherry on the cake would be selling an art object to pay myself back for time and gasoline it took to be there. More importantly, this experience was meaningful in ways that couldn’t possibly have a dollar sign attached to it. I got to meet some really wonderful people and had myself the Texan time of my life. The day ended at a local art gallery where we chatted with some pretty remarkable artists into the morning hours.
Thank you all the San Antonio folks who came together in the park – and much appreciation, Kellen and Faith! I consider my pit-stop in Texas to be a step in the right direction, and I look forward to future collaborations with you fine ladies of the Lone Star State.
