To Bear Creek, or not to Bear Creek, that...is the question.

Another thing that Andrew filled me in on last night besides the concert at Peggy's was a chance to go to an old abandoned mining town called Bear Creek. It had been lived in up until a while ago (there are still folks alive who had lived there as children), but had been pretty abruptly abandoned apparently. The trip out there is in conjunction with a group of European artists that have come to town to take part in Art Gate (here's the official breakdown):

The Inaugural Art Gate Program

An Introduction by Caitlin Gardner

This July 12-19 marks the launch of the very first Art Gate International. Primarily conceived of by Greg Hakonson and developed by the Dawson City Arts Society (DCAS), Art Gate has been envisioned as a creative interchange program between artists from Dawson City partnered with artists from around the world.

This year, there are seven participants who call home as close as Dawson and the Yukon and as far as Berlin and Denmark. They will be spending two days at the Bear Creek Compound, collecting photos, sketches, and ideas, which they will use for the next week to create a body of work inspired and informed by Bear Creek.

Bear Creek is a significant component of the Art Gate project and largely responsible for its initial conception. It is an important site historically and culturally to the Klondike region and Yukon gold rush. It is hoped that Art Gate will raise local and national awareness of Bear Creek, and eventually serve as a fundraising initiative for its preservation and restoration.  

Hakonson feels it is especially important that artwork about Bear Creek be expressed not just by people of the community, for the community, but that visitors be given the chance to interpret and channel its spirit and significance in order to communicate and exchange with locals in a new and alternative light; in other words, to “re-present” Bear Creek.

The plan is to acquire pieces created during Art Gate into a permanent Bear Creek collection, which will be perpetually on tour. In this way, awareness will be raised not only among locals, but also on a national scale.

The broad vision for Art Gate in coming years is certainly ambitious, not to mention ambiguous. This inaugural event is intended to act as an introduction and invitation for other cities to follow suit. In the coming years, the idea is that any city from around the world will be encouraged to participate in mutually beneficial artistic partnership. Though it is in its initial stages of development and therefore remains relatively unspecific in terms of process and production, Art Gate will assert the continuation of embracing all forms of art and inclusion wherever possible.

Each city will be free to conduct their events to whatever duration and extent they wish, while maintaining a conceptual parallelism. Art Gate emphasizes overlooked aspects of culture, meaning both physical and conceptual “sites”- such as Bear Creek.

Dawson is undoubtedly well suited and prepared to take on such an initiative. One need only walk down the street any day during the summer months to see that this is an environment primed for artistic innovation on an international stage. Not only do un-conventional contemporary artistic practices thrive and abound in this small town, but it has also always warmly welcomed a concentrated population of extreme diversity.

We hope that the Art Gate Program will increase Dawson’s already notable art profile to a prestigious and recognized national scale. For now, we wish our visiting artists an inspiring and productive week in the Klondike.

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Karen (KIAC Director) emphasized that we didn't need to feel obligated to participate in Art Gate if we made the trip out, we could just go if we wanted to. The plan was to meet at KIAC at 1 p.m. today to head out there. But I had a decision to make, go to Bear Creek or capture more video of the road grader in action. They are planning a second trip tomorrow at the same time to Bear Creek, and its possible that I won't have another opportunity to shoot the grader, so I choose to shoot video. 

The day was pretty warm (no rain today), and they were already in action by the time I got outside. So, I booked it for where I heard them working and shot for about an hour again. They were going over some of the same areas as yesterday with plans to hit some of the side roads a little later in the day. Shooting went as smoothly as it did yesterday, with one exception: no matter how much bug dope I put on the mosquitos wouldn't go away!! About half way through the shooting they swarmed me and wouldn't let up!! So about 45 minutes into shooting I decided that I would give it about another 15 minutes and then head home. I did just that and trotted off to have a late lunch, download the video I'd shot, and make a grocery list (out of some of the everyday's). 

After relaxing for a short while I headed out to mail off the postcards I'd written (Dad, Chris, and Jen: look for those in about 10-15 days...), drop by the ODD gallery to check in with Tara about a couple of things, and then to the Bonanza Market (grocery store). I hadn't had the chance to fully explore the Bonanza Market before because I'd gotten there right before they closed, but this time I had plenty of time. It's more compact than the General Store Market, and better organized. Perhaps a little less selection, but they did have chili beans and fixings, which I didn't find at the General Store. Again it cost me a little more than it would back home, but these groceries mixed with what I had left should last me a while. 

When I got back home a landscape service was cutting the grass around the residency (Tara had thought they would do this by Monday, but I think the rain pushed them back...). So it was noisy for a little while. I dug into some hummus and pita and went to work in the studio for a while, eager to look at some of the video from today and probably even play with it a little bit. 

About an hour after I'd started working in the studio the door bell rang. A couple of the young art folks from last night had tracked us down and were hoping to see the residency and studios, so we obliged for a little while fielding questions about our work and applying for things and how long the time period was between being accepted for the residency and its actuality. Realizing the time they headed out for work and a film screening, and left us to it. 

Presently I'm waiting for a video to render. I took one of the grader videos and slowed it own to 1% speed and am waiting for a stop motion blur filter to render, with the video slowed down so much each frame ticks off one at a time, giving it too much of a jarring motion...I'll let you know how things go tomorrow!