Karen McCoy, Chair of the Sculpture Department at the Kansas City Art Institute, has been named Lead Artist for the National Bicentennial Commemoration of the Lewis & Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase. The project involves Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Signature Events on Oct. 14-26, 2003, at the Falls of the Ohio in Louisville, Ky., and at Clarksville, Ind., as well as March 12-14, 2004, in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
In a letter confirming her selection for the project, judges described McCoy as "the unanimous choice." They commended McCoy's "amazing array of diverse and collaborative experience."
"I'm thrilled to be selected for this exciting project," McCoy said. "It will draw upon many of my previous experiences, and I know I can make a contribution, especially when it comes to community collaboration."
The Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Cultural Development Initiative is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.
Organizers identified four goals for the project:- Strengthen the arts in communities along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail; - Support artistic creativity and preservation as well as learning in the arts; - Create a deeper understanding of our past and how it shaped our world;- Bring together diverse groups of people to recognize, support and commemorate the expedition.
McCoy, who joined the Kansas City Art Institute faculty in 1994, earned a bachelor's degree from Northeast Louisiana University, a master's degree from Northern Illinois University and a master of fine arts degree (MFA) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
McCoy's specialties include site-specific sculpture, installations, video projection, autonomous sculpture objects and drawings that explore relationships between nature, culture and perception. For more than 20 years, she has created site-specific environmental sculpture across the United States and in Europe. She has permanently sited pieces in Denmark at the Tranekaer International Center for Art and Nature on Langeland and at Krakamarken in Jutland; at Europos Parkas in Lithuania; in Jackson, Wyo.; at the Kansas City Freight House in Missouri; and at the South Carolina Botanical Garden in Clemson, S.C.
During her sabbatical year, she was awarded the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship for a distinguished residency at the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, Calif., and an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant for her residency at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in New York, Oklahoma, Missouri and Connecticut.
In 2002, McCoy oversaw the DeKalb County Farmland Project. "Conversations about DeKalb," a Museum Without Walls Project for Northern Illinois University, involved video-taping interviews with farmers and other community members in DeKalb County, one of three areas in the U.S. that are most endangered by urban sprawl, which is usurping about 1.3 acres a day of prime farmland. The project focused on food production and agriculture as they relate to culture. McCoy and the project team created a mixed-media installation that included a video projection onto an old storefront in downtown DeKalb, Ill.
In 2000, she was commissioned to create a temporary site-specific project in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Essentially, McCoy "wove" an island, using willow branches harvested from the island where the project was installed.
"Local basket weavers came onto the island to offer their expertise," she said. "Many people came to plant and weave before we moved onto shaping the mount. Construction workers in town were surprised that we might need some additional soil at Emily's Pond, but they were happy to drop some off and see what was going on. The man whose job it was to clean the drain box was absolutely hostile until he realized we had permission from the rancher and were interested in running an underground tube to listen to the sounds of running water he was creating, as he cleared away debris."
For the Lewis & Clark project, McCoy will help select, collaborate with and teach a local creative artist (such as a choreographer, composer, poet, writer, filmmaker or visual artist) how to use a community-based process as a tool to create work. The artists will then work together with diverse groups to create work that engages the community in the artistic process. "The resulting projects will serve to motivate and encourage people to examine the legacy of Lewis and Clark and how that legacy intersects with current issues of importance in their community," the Request For Qualifications explains.
Artist selection criteria included artistic excellence and accomplishment, as demonstrated by the application materials; qualifications and expertise of the artist in relation to the program's strategies; experience of the artist/mentor in managing community-based collaborations with organizations, artists and the community to develop arts projects; experience working on projects of diverse scales, locales and circumstances; and demonstrated interest in investigating cultural, natural, historical and recreational themes, outdoor sites, projects of significant scale in scope and geography and collaborative public initiatives.
McCoy plans to continue her teaching duties at KCAI while overseeing the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Arts Plan project.
The Kansas City Art Institute is a private, independent four-year college of fine art and design, awarding the bachelor of fine arts degree in art history; ceramics; design and illustration; fiber; painting and printmaking; photography; new media; sculpture; and studio art with an emphasis on creative writing. Founded in 1885, the Kansas City Art Institute recently was named one of America's Best Small Colleges(r). For more information, visit KCAI on the Web at www.kcai.edu.
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