Kickstarter

Frack This?  

The Wyoming Artist Expedition  July 7th-21st, 2012

Examining the collision of art, the environment, and our economy 

What: 8 artists will spend two weeks visiting Wyoming’s remote public lands, known as Wilderness Study Areas and Citizens Proposed Wilderness Areas, to better understand the environment, the scientific research, and the people making a living there and get a firsthand look at Public Land being drilled for oil and gas. The artwork produced from this experience will make up an exhibition that opens in cities across America including Laramie Wyoming and Cleveland Ohio (more locations to follow). We are raising money to cover the significant costs of travel, safety gear, and supplies for creating artwork. The perks for backing our project are some of the best of any project on Kickstarter. Please back our project!

 Why:      Wyoming remains one of the wildest places in the lower 48 states and is being drilled for oil and gas at an astounding rate. While we often think that America’s National Parks are the wildest, most remote, and most beautiful places in the Country, Wyoming’s Public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management rival any of our National Parks. In the center of the state is a shining example of this, the Red Desert. Roughly 6 million acres in size, the Red Desert has numerous endemic species, some of the last roadless areas in the lower 48 states, and one of the largest oil and gas deposits in the country. The Red Desert exemplifies the clash of environment, fracking, and the struggle of people in and around these areas to make a living. A development proposed last summer near Thermopolis, WY is over 400 square miles in size and would contain over 3,000 wells.

The goal of this trip is to see Wyoming’s rarely visited wilderness and Citizen Proposed Wilderness Areas, to better understand and document the energy boom, and to use art to communicate Wyoming’s special places at the center of the oil and gas drilling. Artists will meet with scientists, meet with oil and gas industry experts, and camp and hike in some of the most pristine and remote wilderness left in America. Artists have a unique ability to interpret the world visually. Artists will be challenged to communicate the importance of these public lands, America’s energy needs, and document what’s happening on the ground. Your support will help us safely experience these wilderness lands and create engaging deeply moving works of art.

Who: The Wyoming Artist Expedition brings together artists from Wyoming, Ohio, and Oregon across the country to produce works primarily on paper that address the uniqueness of the people and lands we’ll visit. Each artist will contribute to a group show that will open in Cleveland, Laramie, and other cities across the country. The participating artists have works in major collections and museums.

Our Artist Explorers

Lori Kella was born in St. Joseph Michigan in 1974.  She received a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1997, and later attended Cornell University where she received her MFA in photography. A selection of her recent work was exhibited at Gallery Drei, in Dresden, Germany, The Print Center in Philadelphia, Flux Space in Philadelphia, and Roy G Biv Gallery in Columbus.  Lori Kella’s work has been featured in several other major exhibitions including a one-person exhibition, Lori Kella: Coordinates, as part of the Wendy L. Moore Emerging Artist Series at MOCA Cleveland and Global Anxieties: Nine Perspectives on a Changing Planet at the College of Wooster Art Museum.  This work was also included in OAC Celebration of Creativity at the Riffe Gallery in Columbus, and at the Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati.  Kella has received two OAC Individual Fellowships Awards, and recently received a Creative Workforce Fellowship, from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture & Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.  Lori Kella lives in Cleveland, OH and she is currently a part-time Assistant Professor at Kent State University’s School of Art. 

Michael Loderstedt’s work incorporates photography, printmaking, artist books and installation. He received his BFA in Printmaking from East Carolina University in 1981 and his MFA from Kent State University in 1985. His work is contained in various public collections including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Progressive Insurance, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the Akron Art Museum, and the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden, Germany. He has completed international residencies at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium and the Grafikwerkstatt in Dresden. His work has been recently been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Italy and Germany at the Santa Reparata Gallery in Florence, Italy, the Kulturrathaus in Dresden, the Alte Feuerwache Galerie in Loschwitz, and as part of Portrait 100 Project in Hellerau. Other recent exhibition venues have included the Print Center in Philadelphia and the International Print Center in New York and the City = Graphics exhibition at the Frank Taal Galerie in Rotterdam, Holland. Michael Loderstedt is a Professor of Art in Printmaking/Photography and the Graduate Coordinator of the School of Art at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. Michael Loderstedt lives with his wife, photographer Lori Kella and their 8 year old son Ethan in Cleveland, Ohio near the shore of Lake Erie. 

Mic Marusek is a commercial and documentary photographer who also works in mixed wet media.  She has completed and shown two documentaries about water use in the border areas of Rio Del Mar in New Mexico, Texas and Mexico where she used to live.   She values getting out in her own environments to capture subject matter with her cameras that she can later incorporate into narrative works of documentary  photography or mixed media.   In her current home of Portland Oregon she volunteers in her community to establish a healthy appreciation of intellectual pursuits with the local elementary school children.  She also teaches commercial and fine art photography both at Portland Community College and the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and is raising a daughter.

Lindsay Olson is a photographer and is currently getting her masters degree for International Studies at the University of Wyoming.  Experiencing new cultures and new ways of life fuel her photography.  Her frequent travels around the world comprise the bulk of her work. She enjoys the entire process of photography and takes great pride and consideration in her final product.  She often frames pieces in found and discarded frames or items not originally intended to host photos.  The subject of her photographs are often patterns in nature - the up-close surprising details that can be found.  Other times she focuses on the deterioration of man made structures and objects. Most recently she’s been experimenting with adapting her photographs for screen printing. As a Wyoming native she continues to be amazed with Wyoming’s less known wilderness. 

Jeff Hubbell is a Laramie, Wyoming native.  He went to the University of Wyoming and received his Fine Arts Degree in Painting in 2007.  His parents instilled a passion for travel at a young age that has continued to influence him.  He does a lot of backcountry backpacking through wild places within the US as well as Internationally.  When traveling Jeff is never without his camera and notebook, constantly recording what he sees to reference later when he returns to his studio.  Although he majored in Painting in College, since graduating he has spent a lot of his artistic time Screenprinting.  He and his partner, Lindsay, started their own Screen Printing and Logo Design business, 105 Degrees West LLC.  They print their own unique hand-drawn t-shirts as well as small batch runs for local businesses.  What started out as a way to sell affordable art to the public, and clothe their friends, has grown into a shared obsession and profitable business.  Their shirts can be seen all around town, as can their art, which they regularly hang at rotating venues.  Now that Jeff has managed to learn a lot of the tricks to printing shirts he is expanding to Screen Printing Limited Edition Paper Prints.  Through this he is trying to meld his love for painting with his desire for production and affordability.  

Jason Lehrer is an artist and organizer of the Wyoming Artist Expedition. He worked for six years as a community organizer in Chicago helping start two community organizations. After moving back to his home state of Ohio, he directed a community organization in Cleveland for seven years dealing with the vacant housing crisis, helped start the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, and continues working part of the year directing part of the OOC’s annual get out the vote effort.  Jason has been producing his artwork full-time since 2009. Jason’s work has focused on landscapes, specifically America’s public lands. Jason played two years of College Football at Heidelberg College before transferring to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and graduating with a BUS degree focusing in Creative Writing and Literature. Jason’s love of the outdoors began in Boy Scouts. After graduating high school, he worked for a summer at Philmont Boy Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico. His wife, also a UNM graduate, grew up in Laramie, Wyoming, and they’ve spent the last 15 years exploring Wyoming’s vast wilderness together. 

•Other artists to be announced shortly

How Will the Money Be Spent?

·         Transportation costs during the two weeks in Wyoming

·         Materials for Artists to produce editions

*         Significant costs of transporting the show from Ohio to Wyoming

·         Hand-made paper from Cleveland’s own Morgan Conservatory

·         Group Camping Gear

·         Space Rental in town

·         Food on the trail/in town

·         Exhibition expenses - framing, advertising, etc.

·         Stipends for scientists visiting us in the field

·         Transponders in case of injury/getting lost and supplemental health/life-flight insurance due to remoteness of the areas we’ll visit

·         Wilderness First Responder first aid course

·         Leave no trace backpacking course