Old Art Building’s Consenses hosts artistic game of “Telephone”

By Abby Chatfield

Sun contributor

On an overcast spring morning, Leelanau County singer/songwriter Joshua Davis visited the Infinite Disc tucked between the trees near the Leland River on the Old Art Building’s (OAB) front lawn. He described seeing the huge glass circle suspended by one little chord. At first it appeared a cloudy purple, but the sun came out and revealed cracks and flaws. That’s when it hit home for Davis, and the inspiration for a new song emerged.

Davis introduced “Up to the Light” at his April 15 OAB concert. As he shared the story about the song’s inspiration, he announced its part in a project about to be unveiled in Leland, an artistic game of “Telephone” including seven local artists. The game challenged another artist, anonymous to him, to respond to his song in their own creative format, just as he’d sat down with the Infinite Disc sculpture to form his own creative response to it. The chain was to continue until all of the artists formed creative interpretations in their own mediums. To his surprise, a voice excitedly piped up from the audience. Kristin MacKenzie Hussey revealed that she was the artist who responded to Davis’ song. The crowd went wild, as did Davis and Hussey at the revelation.

Davis and Hussey are part of the Consenses Walks project, a challenge for artists of varying mediums living in the same community to work together in an anonymous chain of inspiration until all five senses are represented. Each receives a piece of art without knowing its story or who created it and is expected to interpret it in their own art form before passing theirs on to the next artist. According to the project’s website, the game rests on the idea that spoken word alone fails to capture the nuances of our individual experiences.

The final results from the Leland Consenses Walks will be unveiled on July 6, starting at 5 p.m., during a guided group tour around the village. A free lawn concert at the OAB will follow. Walks will continue on Thursday afternoons starting at 4 p.m. throughout the summer. For those who prefer to take the walk on their own, a QR code next to each piece of art provides a map of all artwork locations around town.

Leland is home to the second completed Consenses Walks founded by Sally Taylor, an artist, musician and former music professor at Berklee College of Music. (She is the daughter of Carly Simon and James Taylor.) Taylor has visited family in Leland for years, so she is familiar with the area’s artistic reputation. Richmond, Virginia, is home to the only other Consenses Walks project completed. Another in Martha’s Vineyard is currently in the works, with more national and international locations to follow.

The origin for Taylor’s Consenses project dates back to the year 2000, when she had a persistent dream of inviting artists into her home to interpret each other’s work. “But I didn’t want to live with other artists,” Taylor said. As internet use grew, her idea blossomed as an exhibition-based project bringing international artists under one roof in museums. Educators then caught on, and an education curriculum was created. “COVID was a catalyst to take it outside,” said Taylor. That is how Consenses Walks began, with Leland as one of its pilot projects. Taylor reached out to the OAB Board in August 2022, and they agreed to host the project. The Board provided a list of artists, but Taylor chose the participants. Her crew would operate it with a goal to approach as many of the senses as possible.

One purpose is to empower community arts organizations to utilize the project in whatever ways benefit their own missions, such as promoting local talent and businesses while connecting the community with its artists. It asks the question: what if art spoke to art without the actual humans getting too involved?

This is how it worked in Leland. A musician interpreted a sculpture, a painter interpreted the song, a poet interpreted the painting, a potter interpreted the poem, a textile artist interpreted the piece of pottery, and an ice cream artisan created a flavor inspired by the textile design. Afterwards, the artists shared their work, revealing a process that Taylor calls Interpretative Chains. Taylor’s observation from watching the Consenses curriculum play out various times is that the result is typically revealing of a collective, holistic statement. “There’s always this magical thing.”

The project surprised participants with common threads throughout the works. According to Taylor, Leland’s chain presented “intensely clear, common threads that speak to Leland as a community, historic and geographic entity.”

 

Artist links in the Leland Consenses Walks chain:

Link one – Sculpture – Infinite Disc – Charlie Hall

Charlie Hall’s sculpture attracts a lot of quiet attention from those who notice it as they pass by. The purple prism invites people to take a moment and ponder. The center of Hall’s piece is a donut-shaped glass disc that hangs from a swivel and was purchased for 35 cents per pound from Shop Optical, where Hall rescued it after it failed a test that deemed it ineligible for use in rose-colored lenses. The disc refracts light differently depending on time and day. Hall stated that refracting light represents his non-understanding of the universe, space, light and time. The hole in the middle is all the space within Space.

Link two – Song – Up to the Light – Joshua Davis

Local celebrity and singer/songwriter Davis wrote a song based on Hall’s sculpture. As he watched the light shine through the glass, it brought forth a maze of cracks and flaws that weren’t visible in flatter light. Davis pondered, “We present in a certain way, but all of us have these cracks to one extent or another. We all share these cracks but put on happy faces.” His song is about this very idea and more.

Link three – Painting – Beauty in the Brokenness – Kristin MacKenzie Hussey

Visual artist and co-owner of The Warren Collective in Leland, Hussey created a watercolor painting inspired by the uplifting angles of Davis’s song. From afar, Hussey’s bouquet looks like a vase of flowers, but look closer and see the vessel is broken. The artist shared, “I wanted to show that true beauty comes from when you let imperfections show through. There’s beauty in the authenticity of sharing those imperfections with others.”

Link four – Poem – Beauty in the Brokenness – Michelle Leask

As an artist, Leask usually works in applique beading, acrylic inks and creative storytelling. The poem she wrote in response to Hussey’s painting is the first she has publicly shared, and it inspired her to write more poetry. Leask finds it to be a joyful process that refreshingly juxtaposes her emotionally-charged day job.

Link five – Pottery – Untitled – Benjamin Maier

Potter and owner of Benjamin Maier Ceramics, Maier’s piece was inspired by Leask’s poem. Maier felt “The poem was a call to action. ‘Don’t give up,’ it said. ‘There is hope in the world if you’re willing to look for it.’” His goal was to create something with a rough, unglazed exterior and a glazed, smooth interior. The vessel is filled with lavender, a metaphor for his mother and the through line of love through the generations of his family.

Link six – Fabric Design – Infinity – Maggie Mielczarek

Artist and founder of Leland Gal, Mielczarek made a successful business out of her hand painted textiles. Although she only had a photo of Maier’s exterior work to go from and rarely uses purple in her work, she picked up on its hue in the exterior tone and incorporated it, along with other jewel tones. She named the design “Infinity” in reference to both the repeating circles within the design and the general way textile design begins with individual pieces that are painted on and then rearranged. “The piece repeats itself over and over into infinity,” Mielczarek said.

Link seven – Ice cream – Blue Unicorn – Joe Welsh

Welsh expresses his creativity through ice cream. Founder of Milk & Honey on Front Street in Traverse City, Welsh is known for his clean ingredients and inventive flavors. He uses mostly organic and local ingredients to make his grass-fed ice cream, and Mielczarek’s fabric design helped him dream up a new flavor called Blue Unicorn. This blueberry, lavender, and orange ice cream will be available at Picnic in Leland, where some of his other flavors are available on a regular basis. Welsh said the project helped him to process subconscious thoughts. The purples and greens in her fabric reminded him of an aerial landscape, which got him thinking about what the fabric maker would eat to match the textile work.

Find out about other similar threads in the chain as you view these works on the Consenses walk. There is no official end date for viewing, but it will only exist until one of the pieces is no longer available and the chain is broken. After listening to fellow artists share their perspectives and relating it back to his own piece, Hall concluded, “It was an attempt to find the beauty in brokenness, and I never articulated with that series of words, but when that came out today it resonated.”

For more information on the Leland Consenses Walks, visit: walks.consenses.org/walk/leland-mi