Tusen Takk — which means “thousand thanks” in Norwegian — is a private studio in Leland on on a heavily forested, packed dirt road, just big enough for one vehicle to get by, driving past luxurious homes amid dense trees.
Lake Michigan is just beyond some of these houses and it’s a quick walk to the water.
“I was really interested in the largeness of the lake and the proximity of that lake. I’ve been walking to the lake every single day," said visual artist Hong Hong, who will be a resident at Tusen Takk through mid-July.
She specializes in abstract art.
“Art ultimately is about the world but the world is too heavy if you try to carry it," she said. "Memory is an abstraction. Language is an abstraction. These are the mechanisms that we use to hold on to something that is not graspable."
Hong creates paper pours, a practice rooted in traditional Chinese paper making.
Each project starts indoors with the inner bark of a mulberry tree, harvested before the first frost of the year.
Then the bark is cooked with ash and hand-beaten using mallets. The bark is mixed with dyes and water to form a gelatinous pulp, which is poured and dried beneath the sun, where it turns into paper.
It’s left to form outside, then another pour begins.
“When I’m making the paper I’m encircling the frame which is sitting out within the landscape, pouring sort of a mixture of ... wet materials into the frame as I walk," Hong said.
"I’m really thinking about circumambulation, which is a traditional Buddhist practice of walking around the sacred object or shrine as a form of devotion.”
This is a private and spiritual practice, Hong said.
“I’m thinking about my family, I’m thinking about god or gods," she said. "I’m also thinking about the paper as a physical body, where all of those external things are entering into the paper and kind of creating its own earth.”
The foundation has attracted a lot of artists. It’s hosted a Pulitzer winning composer, some creative writers, painters and others with work featured far and wide.
It’s pretty competitive to earn a residency at Tusen Takk. There’s two rounds of selecting applicants. The foundation uses a panel of arts professionals to inform who gets a residency. The average stay is four to eight weeks.
In fact, Hong was previously denied.
"I applied a couple times and didn’t get in," she said. "The first few times. But then I got in. And if any artists are listening don’t give up. Just keep going."
Assistant director Maggie Pavao, said applications have doubled since the foundation opened three years ago.
“It does come down to who’s ultimately the best fit for
the facilities that we have and who wants to make use of such a dedicated time,” Pavao said.
Artists have unfettered access to the private studios, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and they’re free to use the space as they see fit.
Pavao, who's worked with artists in New York City, said Tusen Takk is different in that way.
“Most residences are communal, they’re like MacDowell or Yaddo where there’s 50 artists at a time," she said. "There are no social obligations or community dinners -some artists come here and they find a freedom and time that’s totally yours.”
But for Hong, this is about more than just solitude. The trip to northern Michigan kind of brings her work and journey full circle, back to the Midwest.
Hong was born in China, and then her family moved to North Dakota when she was 10, and lived there for five or six years.
“And that was really formative to my history and my family’s history, she said. "But I haven’t really had a chance to come back to this area and to make work here.”
She chooses specific locations to create her pours. They’ve taken her all across the country, stretching from east coast to west coast and parts of the south.
But this is the first time she's been back to the Midwest in some time.
Her pour at Tusen Takk is part of a series called “Earth at the Edge of my Sun.”
“It's a question about homecoming, it's about exile, it's about loss and I thought this could be sort of an active homecoming as I'm trying to answer my own questions about home," Hong said.
The Foundation does require some form of public engagement, but the artist can decide what that entails, it could be an exhibition of work or an artist talk with the public.
By the end of her residency, Hong will be showing her work at Commongrounds in Traverse City. It will be in the Alluvion Theater, exhibiting alongside three other Michigan based artists Thursday, July 13.
PC: Courtsey of the Boardman Review
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