Assassin, 2007 Video Still

Stephen Ausherman began working with digital video in the autumn of 2005. His collaborative videos have since earned him a residency at Cornucopia Arts Center in Lanesboro, Minnesota, and have been exhibited at contemporary art venues in Louisville, Miami, San Francisco, and Santa Fe. In 2006, he won the Movie Maker Award at Albuquerque’s fourth annual Local Shorts Film Fest.

Ausherman was the 2005 Writer-in-Residence for Buffalo National River in Arkansas, Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, and Bernheim Forest in Kentucky. His books include 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Albuquerque (2008), Fountains of Youth, a novel (2006), and Restless Tribes, an award-wining collection of travel essays (2004). In pursuit of stories as a freelance journalist, Ausherman interviewed witchdoctors in the foothills of Kilimanjaro, accompanied two U.S. Marines on a hike through a Honduran cloud forest, and crisscrossed Iraq in an Oldsmobile. He taught English in China and Korea, and has been recognized in various communities for his work with children and adults with developmental disabilities. Born in China and raised in North Carolina, Ausherman took an unscheduled detour to New Mexico in 1996. He has lived there ever since.

Visit his site at www.restlesstribes.com

I never doubted that Blue Sky Project would be a rewarding opportunity for myself. I’d anticipated that living and working with respected artists would be a remarkable experience. It exceeded my expectations. The amount of thought and work everyone put into their projects was motivating, to say the least. The household environment was continuously charged with creative energy.

The work environment could be somewhat ambiguous. Accepting a group of young strangers as collaborators is an enormous challenge. It’s a rigorous process of justifying every artistic decision as it’s being made and communicating ideas effectively. Kids generally don’t buy into eloquent artspeak. I had to learn a more versatile language to describe the process and intent of the project without compromising its meaning. It was an invaluable lesson for my long-term goal of bringing contemporary art into broader segments of the community.

At times I found it easier to create independently. But without group input, these pieces failed to reach the greater objective of the project. The ones that succeed are a fine balance of shared vision and technical capabilities. Our project also depended on all participants contributing their strongest talents. For the first week, it looked as though we had little to work with. As we got to know each other better, the creative process seemed to flow more naturally. The youth participants all had certain talents that they initially refused to admit or didn’t recognize as potentially useful.

Ultimately it came down to a matter of opening trust in all directions. I think there were varying degrees of skepticism on all sides throughout the summer. I wasn’t entirely convinced it was a worthwhile effort for everyone involved until I saw my collaborators showing off their work to friends and family at the final exhibition.