The Mackinac Quarterly, August - October 2002

Artists Set Sail on Superior
by Brad Garmon

When Mary Brodbeck, a shy, energetic woodcut artist and self-proclaimed "farm girl" from Woodland, Michigan, was first approached about sailing the entire coast of Lake Superior in a homebuilt wooden boat, she admits to having some reservations. "I'm kinda useless when a boat's moving," Brodbeck, now teaching part-time at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA), admits over a cup of coffee. "If I'm not nauseous, I'm drowsy."

Taking a group of artists along for a circum-navigation of Lake Superior was the brainchild of Fritz Seegers, a stocky, bearded sailor and digital artist who built the small sailboat, Aliwihta, and longed to take it around Lake Superior. Seegers invited his friend and videographer Mark Spink, along for the ride. Word spread through Spink's sons to their friends at KAI, and by the spring of 2001, a vision for a veritable floating artist commune had formed.

Seasickness was just one potential hazard Brodbeck considered as she contemplated joining the trip. She also faced at least a month cramped in a sailboat so small two people can reach across it and touch each other, with two men she didn't know—artists whose nautical abilities were unknown at best—sailing along a rugged 1,600 mile coastline comprised primarily of treacherous rocks and secluded forests.

But for Brodbeck, who has been working on an ambitious series of painstaking woodcut prints since visiting Japan and studying the techniques with native masters, the offer was too good to pass up. "My husband convinced me to pack a tent and backpack and camp-stove—just in case. If things got bad socially, I had a way out," she shrugs. "This was such a great opportunity, I thought, I don't care if I get sick or not'."

The excursion proved enticing for seven Great Lakes artists all together. The group had to divvy-up the four-month voyage, since the Aliwihta could only hold three to four people at a time. They traveled in small groups, photographing, painting, sketching and video-taking, eventually bringing it all together to create one large and engaging collection of work that documents the entire four month trip (see sidebar for exhibition schedule).

Aboard ship, the groups established routines, splitting up the sailing duties and negotiating the delicate social, physical and artistic nuances aboard their frail sailing community: from borrowing the small dinghy to head ashore for restroom breaks and sketching, to sleeping and cooking warm meals to counteract the frigid temperatures.

"The air is so clean, the water so cold and pure, we drank it unfiltered," says Brodbeck, who sailed on the first leg of the trip with Seegers and painter Brent Spink. She fondly recalls a host of wild animal sightings, such as moose, caribou, otter, bear and eagles. "Most of my work is interpretive," she says of her woodcuts—a series of stark images suggestive of the permanence and strength of the stone she often takes as her subject. "It's simplified into composition, drawing shapes that are representative of the geography. After two weeks my eye focused in. I had an easier time seeing what I wanted to see."

Though clearly a powerful voice for nature, Mary is reticent to talk about her woodcuts in terms of environmental protection of the Great Lakes. "There is political art, and my art isn't political art," she asserts. "There is no manifesto. I do consider myself an environmentalist, but art has its own language. I just do it and hopefully [the viewer] can interpret it in some kind of special way."

"Lake Superior is more spiritual than political for me," she continues. "I'm drawn to the area because of what I feel. I connect with the rocks and the cold, cold water. I've heard people say, when they see the show, 'I had no idea this was up there, that it looked like this, that there were these cliffs.' So there is some educational aspect to it, a feeling of respect for nature and the lake. If you respect something, you don't violate it, whether it's people, animals, or nature."

The project, partially funded by the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo and the Community Arts Grant of Pharmacia Foundation, is continuing an exhibition tour throughout the region. For further information, contact Mary Brodbeck at 616-344-6654, marybrod@aol.com. Visit the website at www.lakesuperiorcircum.org.