Artist Story: James Barry and Hui-Min Tsen

James Barry and Hui-Min Tsen

On the surface, our ties to exploration take an obvious form. The over-riding structure of our project, the Mt. Baldy Expedition, is that of a journey. We are building a 12-foot wooden sailing dinghy that we will sail from Chicago to Mt. Baldy, a sand dune in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. In addition to this, we have been performing lectures and workshops to share our discoveries with the world.

The project was inspired by the great explorers of the past, and we frequently draw parallels between them and our own “small” journey to investigate the experience of wonder and the act of commonplace exploration in daily life. We use explorer’s writings, journals, observations, and technologies as a model to illustrate historical continuity between them and us, as well as to contrast contemporary life with the past. By actually acting on our wonder rather than creating a staged or fictionalized response, exploration has come to permeate every aspect of our art practice.

Similar to Magellan's miscalculation of the size of the Pacific Ocean, a project we thought would take only six months has stretched into more than four years. We vastly underestimated how long it would take even an experienced boat builder; and as novices, every step has been lengthened by research, some blunders, and careful consideration of the cost, materials, methods, and historical precedents. Our research in these matters has always taken one of two forms. The first is the practical considerations such as what glue would work best on our boat or what sorts of fasteners to use. The other is the history and methods of past explorers that we then translate into contemporary life. Often this research is driven simply by our own curiosity. Usually the curiosity creates an experience of wonder, which when acted upon can lead to a sense of discovery. In many ways, our project lives in the interaction between history, art, and daily circumstances outside of our control. Through this unpredictability, the real discovery happens.

Our response to many of our unpredicted challenges has been to embrace them by creating a series of “mini-projects” to share them with the public. These mini-projects continue to use history as a model, frequently combining photographs and illustrations with lectures or text pieces, and allow us to explore unforeseen issues that have come up along the way. For instance, when we realized how far we were from completing the project at the close of our first summer, we questioned our role as child-like explorers in the text piece, Conversations with Our Parents on the Topics of Everyday Exploration, Play, Learning and Risk by interviewing our parents about our childhood explorations and their contemporary ones.

Sometimes a practical issue introduces a new concept into the project. While researching what lumber to use, we discovered that the only available, affordable, and appropriate marine-grade plywood was a Southeast Asian "Mahogany" called Meranti. Although we knew it to be a questionable wood, we purchased it and after doing further research discovered it was probably an endangered hardwood from Malaysia. The slide lecture and radio broadcast The Mt. Baldy Expedition’s Quest for Planking: a Report on Douglas-fir, Jequitiba, and Meranti Plywood delved into the topic of contemporary global trade by comparing our experience of trying to find a wood supplier with other searches undertaken during the larger history of botanical exploration. At our Announcement Lecture, we declared we were going “to become explorers and engage in everything we have read explorers engage in.” By using the Meranti, we inculpated ourselves in the darker side of the history of exploration.

As artists though, we have found our most difficult challenge in the project to be fully conveying our sense of discovery to others because it is based in such personal experiences. Consequently, we try to be as inclusive and inviting as possible. We frequently give the audience something during our lectures and workshops that relates to the issues at hand. We hope these gifts are fun and of interest to them and have included such things as photographs, knot tying kits, and a cut-and-assemble paper boat.

Additionally, we have included other people in the day-to-day happenings of the project when possible. We have three shop assistants who were interested in learning more about boat building and a full board of advisors whose greater experience and generosity has been a great help to us. Overall our hope is that the project functions as an invitation rather than some sort of declaration. It is based in a very simple idea: we are just building a boat and sailing around the lake. The only difference between us and all the other commonplace adventurers who came before is that we are contextualizing our actions within a historical framework in the hope of starting a larger conversation.

The Mt. Baldy Expedition is a long-term , mixed media collaboration between Chicago artists James Barry and Hui-min Tsen. Since 2004, they have lectured, exhibited, and participated in events at various Chicago venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Dogmatic Gallery, Mess Hall, Gallery 400, WLUW, and VONZWECK.