Lakes to Lakes

This year long project is funded by and Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. The Artist Initiative Grant provides me with the opportunity to explore an area of England unfamiliar to me, one which shares some of the same characteristics as the place where I now live.  Throughout  2010 and 2011 I will be working on a series of photographs “Lakes to Lakes” which tie together place and identity, and explore the connections between the lakes of Beltrami County in northern Minnesota and the Lake District in Cumbria, England.

The Lake District of Cumbria, in England twins with Beltrami County in northern Minnesota in the US in many ways.  Geographically, both lie in the northwest corner of a close to another country: Beltrami County and Canada, Cumbria and Scotland.  Geologically, both areas have lakes and forests, though the terrain is very different: old mountains in Cumbria, and flat or rolling terrain in and the reasons for the existence of the lakes differ.  Both areas face ecological challenges in a changing climate, and both areas are trying to meet those challenges in difficult economic times.
Click to here to see the side by side county comparison chart

The Lakes to Lakes project is born out of earlier work: A Sense of Place which was exhibited at the North Dakota Museum of Art in 2008/9.  I have always been tied to the landscape and a sense of place rather than it’s people or government.  I was born in England, and have always tied my sense of identity to my birthplace in the south west of England, with it’s rolling green fields and westward facing ocean.  I have maintained a sense of myself as English even though I lived in the US for more than 30 years.  I have lived in Bemidji Minnesota for much of that time. Perhaps my refusal to see myself as American is because my daily world is connected to the UK through the internet.  I listen to the BBC and read English newspapers, watch English TV, and with my phone I can be connected in the most remote places.  This is my 31st year in the US, this is the year I will take American citizenship. Traveling back and forth to a familiar, yet unfamiliar country makes the spatial divide real again.  The photographs taken over this year, comparing both counties, countries and environments will be a reflection on this journey of my changing identity, and allows me to think about the issues which surround identity, place, and allegiance.

I am particularly grateful to the State Legislature and to everyone who works so hard to keep the arts alive in this recession.   A lot of people are still trying to climb out of the fiscal black hole and struggling to keep their ambition.  Artists who receive grants this year have a particular responsibility to make this grant work on many levels for the community.  Arts grants now function much like the WPA in the 1930’s and 40’s: they keep artists employed, but more so, they feed back to the world a spirit of place and time.

Vivienne Morgan