Lucinda Bliss, a professor and dean of graduate programs at the New Hampshire Institute of Art (NHIA) in Manchester, received a Kindling Grant to fund an upcoming creative project called Tracking the Border. SPACE Gallery, a nonprofit contemporary visual and performance art space in Maine, created the Kindling Fund to support visual arts projects.
Tracking the Border is an interdisciplinary project based on navigating the 611 mile border between Canada and the US in Maine. Bliss will travel the length of the border by running, paddling, snowshoeing and snowmobiling. During this journey she will include dialogue with people engaged with border issues from a range of perspectives, including the native community, forestry, geology and the border patrol.
“I am truly honored to receive this grant,” says Bliss. “My intention is not to be didactic with this project, but to use this viewpoint to generate a set of questions. I am interested in the larger philosophical and ontological questions implicit in this exploration and how this is significant to Maine’s identity and future.”
The project will involve blogging, drawing, a collaborative video/sound piece and a series of lectures and panels. Bliss hopes to incite a cross-disciplinary dialogue about the dispute of borders in the world.
Current Issue - May 2024