The Bear Season Project is a collaborative art project designed to create a visual time capsule of polar bear season in Churchill.
For thirty days beginning October 15, the events, ideas and images of Churchill, Manitoba’s polar bear tourism season will be collected and documented. The time capsule will consist of images, journal entries, news article, interviews, etc…
As the visual component, thirty artists from across North America will be chosen to create thirty pieces of art based on a specific day of ‘bear season’. Artists will receive a mini-time capsule of that day for use as inspiration for their work.
Together, these thirty paintings will create a 10′x12′ composite image representing Churchill’s bear season and serve as a visual time capsule. (If more than 30 artists are interested, then, well, we’ll do more composites…) The Bear Season Project will be released in the spring of 2012 in Churchill with a summer exhibit planned for Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The significance of the number 30 loosely refers to two anniversaries of bear season. The first being the 30th anniversary of the filming of Polar Bear Alert, the National Geographic documentary that essentially launched polar bear tourism. The second referring to the fact that several bear researchers feel that bears may no longer inhabit Hudson Bay in thirty years. The project will record Churchill at possibly the peak of its polar bear tourism lifecycle… orrr maybe not, who knows.
The artwork and time capsule of bear season will be on display throughout Bear Season 2012 at which time the information as well as special edition prints of all artwork will be placed in a time capsule to be opened in 2042.
Currently, there are artists from Churchill, Winnipeg, Toronto, Vancouver, Whitehorse and Miami participating. All are welcome…
Can someone please give me more information on becoming involved in this project as an artist?
Thank you