Venture Grant: Contacting Relatives/Painting and Photography
Venture Grant Proposal
Visual art as a research method is a technique that we feel would be a beneficial addition to the research skills and knowledge that we have gained as anthropology and biology majors at Colorado College. The use of different colors, shades of light, and angles to portray an idea, can be just as effective as using words or graphs as data. As first cousins from the Sullivan family, venturing to Ireland to explore the landscape of our ancestors, and to find our relatives by using the minimal information that our grandmother has on our family in Ireland, is a project that we would like to undertake. In order to combine our interests in researching our family tree, and visual art as a research method, we propose to document the landscape and family members that we meet through landscape painting with watercolors (Janet), portrait photography with a medium format camera (Sarah), and a journal of creative writing that we create along the way. We hope that this project will inspire others in the Colorado College community to seek an understanding of their ancestors, and the landscape they were a part of. A sense of grounding and connection to a physical place is invaluable for everyone. Through the documentation of our venture in Ireland with photography and watercolor paintings, we hope to encourage individuals to look beyond their small world to realize and construct a sense of place in a larger world than their own.
The connection that our grandparents have to their land of origin, Ireland, has been lost over the years. No one has visited, or kept in contact with relatives. The only evidence that displays our family’s heritage is the physical characteristics we possess-our fair skin, blue eyes, and freckles, as well as our large Irish-Catholic family; our grandparents have 13 children, and 22 grandchildren. As we visited with our grandparents over winter break, our grandmother showed us the family tree that she has been working on. Although the family tree records our family several generations back, our Irish relatives are not included. The only documentation we have of our relatives that live in Ireland is a few family members’ names, the counties in Ireland where they live, and a snapshot that a friend sent her of a fish shop that our relatives own in County Cork. To make contact with our relatives and to rebuild this connection between our family and Ireland would be a daunting task, but rewarding in many ways. As social/natural science majors, we feel proficient in fieldwork for research projects and have experience in documenting ethnographic (Sarah) and scientific (Janet) data through the writing of research papers. However, we would now each like to explore more visual and creative ways of documenting data, which can not only convey ideas and information just as effectively as written data, but can express different nuances and emphases on information that would not be as effective in written form. To document the people and landscapes that we encounter through creative media such as photography, paintings, and creative writing, would not only provide an effective media to present our experiences to our family and the CC community, but it would also enable us to further our studies in these artistic fields.
As an anthropology major (Sarah), and a biology major (Janet), neither of us has been able to explore the art education that CC has to offer with the amount of time and intensity that we would like. We have both taken a few classes within the art department. Sarah has taken Visual Culture, Introduction to Drawing, and two photography classes, but would like to further her studies in her recently discovered passion of landscape and portrait photography with a medium format camera. Janet has taken classes in Visual Culture, Introduction to Drawing, and has pursued watercolor painting in advertisements for the Everglades National Park in Florida. Due to her demanding academic course load in Biology, though, Janet has not pursued her interests in painting and drawings as much as she would like. To apply the skills that we have gained in researching and recording data in the field to a more visual and interpretive method of documenting information is a task that we are very eager to explore since we feel as though we have demonstrated our abilities in the academic field of research.
As part of a liberal arts education, we believe that it is important to be given the opportunity and means to combine different realms of interest and experience to produce a cohesive project, such as the one we are proposing. Our artwork will not only display our talents and efforts in our areas of specialty, but it will also exhibit our abilities to depict the information we gather, from experiences we have, family members we meet, and landscapes we encounter in a very telling and descriptive visual media. Given this unique opportunity, as cousins in our last year together at college, we are enthusiastic to carry out this interdisciplinary project in which the results will be shared with our family and made available to the Colorado College community. During eighth block, we will display our multi-media project on campus, as well as compile a book of our artwork, and creative writing.
Thank you for your consideration of our proposal. We will also be pursuing funding from the President’s Special Project Fund, for $668 more that we need to receive in order to make this venture possible.
Itinerary
3/13/03 plane from Denver to London to Dublin
3/14 – 3/15 stay at hostel in Dublin
3/15 train to County Cork
3/15 – 3/18 stay at hostel in Cork
3/18 bus to Killarney
3/18 stay at hostel in Killarney
3/19 bus to Galway
3/19 – 3/21 stay at hostel in Galway
3/22 train to Dublin
3/23 plane from Dublin to London to Denver
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Budget |
Cost for 2 people
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Airfare:
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$966
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Transportation within Ireland:
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$40 $72 |
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Food:
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$300 |
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Lodging:
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$230 |
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Photo Supplies: |
20 rolls for $60.00 |
$60
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$1668 for 2 people |
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