In the mid-19th century, American painters from the art movement of the Hudson River School traveled into the nation’s wilderness to gather inspiration from the sweeping landscapes. These paintings were not only meant for enjoyment, but as a way to transform Americans’ perceptions about the West. Train companies used these romantic and realistic paintings — such as Albert Bierstadt’s landscapes of the Rocky Mountains, Yosemite Valley, and the Sierra Nevada — to entice people to move out west. In the 20th century, Ansel Adams’s black-and-white photographs of Yosemite also fostered advocacy for conservation.
Now, the National Park Service continues the legacy of these artists with over fifty artist-in-residence programs that provide lodging inside the park for visual artists, writers, and musicians hoping to stay for a few weeks. While at each national park, the artists contribute to park programming, such as speaker events and workshops, and gather inspiration for a piece of artwork which they donate to the park after their stay.
Los Angeles artist Lorraine E. Bubar, who has done animation, watercolors, and now papercutting throughout her career, has completed several artist-in-residencies in national parks. The program has allowed her to travel to Denali, Zion, Petrified Forest, Lassen Volcanic, Capitol Reef, and most recently, Acadia National Park on the Downeast coast of Maine.
From hundreds of applications, Acadia picked five artists for 2024. As the visual artist from “Away,” someone who doesn’t live in Maine, Bubar visited the park at the tail end of this summer. Bubar first explored the tourist-filled side of the park, with the overflowing trailhead parking lots and trademark ladder trails. She spent these days participating in all activities an on-the-beaten path tourist might do: hiking Cadillac Mountain, traversing the Beehive and Precipice Loops, exploring the carriage trails, and eating popovers at Jordan Pond House. Since she was lodging at Schoodic Peninsula, the “quiet” side of the park, she spent the rest of her time off the beaten path.
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“When I was just on the quiet side, I really fell in love with Acadia. I’m also a runner. In the morning, I could get up and run to the point of the Schoodic Peninsula for sunrise. This is why it’s so important to be immersed in the park as the artist-in-residence,” Bubar said.
“I could go with a preconception of what it is like. But you don't know until you experience the park,” Bubar said. National parks have become an increasingly sensationalized commodity. In Utah, many people try to visit five national parks in five days. However, the true magic of these parks comes from exploring the parts which are more tucked away. As Bubar spent more time exploring the park, she was enchanted by many things she hadn’t expected to find.
“I was anticipating that this would be a chance to do pieces about water, but I had no idea what the coastline would look like with the pink granite rocks, and then the waves crashing, and then all the cormorants and gulls and eider ducks, and then the seaweed. The seaweed was amazing, so that's what I really hope first to make a piece about,” Bubar said.
She also mentioned the mushrooms and fungi, including ghost pipe plants and carnivorous pitcher plants that she saw at offshore preserves, and the sweeping views of the Milky Way in the dark, unpolluted night sky. Off Schoodic Peninsula, she was enchanted by Little Moose Island, which she could walk out to at low tide across a natural path of rocks and seashells.
Bubar started doing these artist-in-residence programs primarily to showcase her unique, “papercut” technique. Starting with a drawing, she cuts out all of the negative spaces with an X-Acto knife, then glues vibrantly colored paper into the spaces on the backside. Always having been drawn to labor-intensive forms of art — her animations were hand-drawn and she made her watercolors with stencils — Bubar noted that these papercuts take hundreds of pieces of paper to complete the design.
“I say to people, I’m painting with paper,” Bubar said. She often dabs parts of the paper pieces with paint, so that they’re lighter on one side and darker on the other, creating an even more intricate design.
Bubar was drawn to papercutting because it shows up in so many different cultures and forms. During her artist talks at the parks, she shares this history with the visitors. “I always talk about the history of paper cutting, showing examples of how it's in so many cultures: in China, Japan, Mexico, and each country uses its own different tools to do it. I talk about how I do it. I try to illustrate to people how I take snapshots of things, and then I'll piece it together in my work,” Bubar said.
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Even for people who aren’t professional artists, Acadia provides an escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life, providing the space to slow down to create and share art. This past summer, I had the privilege of living and working at a family camp in Acadia National Park. The campers, many of whom were multi-generational families from the Boston or New York City areas, spent the week hiking the island’s trails, swimming in the lake, and eating their meals together in a family-style dining hall. Every Friday night, the campers would have a talent show, where many would share poems, songs, and stories that they created throughout the year, and one time, even a mockumentary they made during their week at camp.
The “Speakeasy,” the camp library, had lights on late into the night as campers wrote, read, and drew — many of their creations were displayed on the walls or left on bookshelves. I spent every moment that I was alone journaling on the dock, reading in my hammock, or messing around on the old keyboard in the dining hall. As someone born and raised on the Maine coast a couple hours south of Acadia, the environment wasn’t entirely unlike what I had lived in before. Yet, the grandeur of the Beech Cliff and the serenity of Echo Lake that met me each time I stepped out of the bunkhouse door prompted reflection. I felt gratitude and inspiration that I don’t always experience at home — not necessarily for lack of interesting scenes, but for lack of time and intention.
The way Bubar spoke about her time as an artist-in-residence, particularly about her unique experience at Acadia, is a testament to the unique inspiration these parks can provide. If nothing else, the parks are a catalyst to pay more attention to everything around us, from the tiniest seashells to the expanse of the open ocean.
Hannah M. Wilkoff is a Harvard College sophomore, double concentrating in Comparative Literature and Economics and a Staff Writer for the Crimson Arts Board. She is the creator of “The Art of the Outside” column, where she writes about how the outdoors serves as an inspiration, subject, and setting for many different artists. She can be reached at hannah.wilkoff@thecrimson.com.
