Ribbon to the Future
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Reculer pour mieux sauter

12/5/2012

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Picture
Visitors contributing to the Vision Wall during Portraits on Portland. © 2012 Hannah Minzloff
Since the last contribution to the blog Hannah and I have been busy with other projects, which allowed us to gain experience and test the audience waters for some of the approaches we had in mind for the various presentations of Ribbon to the Future.

Hannah developed the notion of “community engagement” as stated in our project summary with Portraits on Portland, the main street in Downtown Dartmouth where gentrification is becoming a fact of life.  She photographed shopkeepers, small business owners and characters of this street for the exhibition she held in September at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth.  She also organized community conversations around a wall-sized, handmade map of the street hanging with the photography in the gallery. It contained all its interesting detail and annotated perceptions of the future of this street as explored in these conversations. The map became an integral part of the show for its duration.

Meanwhile I experimented with the making of a book on a project I completed with a solo show at ViewPoint Gallery in Halifax: Come from Away, Artists of Minas Basin (2004).  I wanted to know about costs, time to print, necessary quality for best printing of colour and black and white photography.  I first produced a hard copy book with a wrap cover and uncoated fibre paper, which I thought to be best for printing the black and white photography.  I printed a limited, numbered edition of 50 which was well received but could not be commercially successful because of the small local audience and the high cost ($52).  I then experimented with a soft cover edition and found that combined with coated matte paper this delivered good results for the printing the photographs.  I had editorial help from author Susan Haley who taught me that putting a photographic show between two covers does not make a book. You need some kind of story line for that.  It took me quite a while to think one up but I believe I succeeded thanks to her encouragement.  With a run of about 20 copies the unit price was $26 including tax and shipping.

The experience over the last 6 months took us away from field work but it was essential for the longer term success of the project as we are in a much better position to assess the public impact as well as costs of the approaches we can take in presenting the results of the Ribbon to the Future project.

Dick
December 2012

Picture
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Putting Ribbon to the Future on the map.

9/22/2011

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Picture
Wayne Reiger and Hannah Minzloff. © Dick Groot 2011
Hannah and I met with Wayne Reiger, a cartographer at the Geomatics Research Group (GRG) of the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) in Middleton to discuss ways to link Ribbon to the Future to geographic positioning and various methods to link a variety of information to the photographs we are taking. Here Hannah and Wayne are working out these technical issues. Many thanks to the GRG which is participating in the Ribbon to the Future project by providing technical and inspirational guidance to make the project a success.

I met with Glenn Ells last week for a conversation about the agricultural economy of the Valley that focussed more on the Kings County side than Annapolis County. Glenn, whose forebears came to the Valley in the late 18th century, has been a farmer for 50 years in the Sheffield Mills area.  He also earned his spurs as Minister of the Environment in the Gerald Regan cabinet in the 1970s. As well Glenn Ells has been prominent in a variety of local agricultural organizations, and he is the author of  a series of 3 historical novels of the region. The conversation made it clear that he provides very well-considered and authoritative information about the evolution of the farming economy in the valley.

Dick Groot
September 2011
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    Hannah Minzloff and Dick Groot

    As photo-based artists, we are visualizing the physical transformations of the land and its use and looking at the future of the Annapolis Valley through innovative initiatives in sustainable food production, transportation, energy, community and youth engagement.

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