My initial attraction to the Blue Sky Project stemmed from the community work that I have been engaged with over the past two years since returning to southwestern Ohio from New York City, my home for close to twenty years. I was excited by the approach and philosophy of the program, with its focus on non-hierarchical process and the opportunity to work collaboratively with such a diverse cross section of youth. My background in experimental theater, the visual arts and my experience as a teacher had allowed me to fully engage with the ideas of collaboration, as well as work closely with individuals whose age and experience were quite different from mine. With these things in mind I applied to the program and was accepted. My summer was now to be filled with the Blue Sky experience.

Though I have been very active in the milieu of theater and its necessary collaborative component, my visual arts practice has almost solely been a solitary one. My ideas and my work come from a place of intense experimentation, and I have always been very inquisitive with regards to accumulating new processes and skills, which in turn has allowed me to develop my bag of tricks fairly extensively, and this has informed the type of work I am willing to take on with respects to the manifestation of my ideas. I have also developed my approach to production, and am a bit set in my ways. This would present one of the biggest challenges to my encounters with my group and the journey we would take to the final presentation of the project. Much of what we went through and developed was a way of thinking about and talking about the work that I came to them with. Our initial discussions, and the exposure to, or lack of exposure to contemporary practice was an ongoing, and in the end, eye opening experience for all of us. I would not trade this experience for anything, and one of my biggest rewards was in seeing how each individual participant came to an understanding of, and I hope, an appreciation of the ways in which expression and creativity can manifest itself. Through our experiments and investigations, I was given access to the concerns and lives of each and every one of my group, I came to care for and respect what each of them has gone through to reach their present place in this world. Not that this was without frustration, but it was via this frustration that I found new ways of connecting to people who are not a part of my usual artistic process, and to better understand that sometimes I need to listen more and check my reactions in order to grow both intellectually and emotionally as well as artistically.

Did the Blue Sky experience live up to my initial expectations? I would have to say that yes it did, but in ways that were totally unexpected from the onset of the program. To be allowed the privilege of intersection with lives I would normally not be a part of, to see the growth and develop bonds with these amazing individuals has really set this summer apart from almost anything I have done in my adult life. The work that came from this experience continues to be developed and shaped, and it was because of everyone, from my youth to the other groups, to the artists and everyone who supports this program, that I feel I have been opened up to a new set of investigations and explorations which will continue far beyond this short lived but totally overwhelming experience. Thank you to all who have been involved with Blue Sky, for this important experience not only for the artists involved, but for everyone who has had the opportunity to be touched and feel the affect of this essential program.