Great Cranberry Island Focus of COA Photography Project As part of her advanced photography course at COA this fall, Artist-in-Resi- dence Debra Goldman organized "The Great Cranberry Island History Project." Twelve students set out to record one sea- son in the life of the island, largest of the five Cranberry Isles. Along with extensive photographing, several class members Clockwise from top: interviewed island residents. The Ways As part of the project, a number of chil- (Great Cranberry Island). dren from the Cranberry island elementary school were given cameras and black-and- Tud Bunker of white film so that they might document Great Cranberry. the island through their own eyes. Gold- Chuck Liebow of man instructed the schoolchildren on how Great Cranberry. to use the cameras, and encouraged them to take photographs on a daily basis of whatever captured their fancy. The film was developed in the COA darkroom Goldman brought contact sheets and prints back to the island and spoke with the children about their experi- ences with the cameras. A selection of the students' and chil- dren's photographs was exhibited in the Visiting Artist's Studio at the end of the semester. In addition, a handmade book featuring some of the work from the Great Cranberry Island project was created Copies of it have been given to the COA Library, the Cranberry Island Library and the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine. On Great Cranberry I came to Maine when I was twelve, to a summer camp on an a course by them, looking for a route that would show me the island close to the mainland I came from my home in Con- essential places of his life on the island, and the time in which necticut and stayed for ten days, and decided in those ten days he has lived. Tud's words revealed a terrain unkown to me, and that Maine should be my home. Eventually I went to school with some difficulty I picked my way along, trying to recall a here in Bar Harbor, and was thrilled when I could finally say I place by the memory of his stories. And when I could not rec- had lived in the state for one full year. ognize these places, I became homesick. When the opportunity arose to begin collecting stories and Tud drove me to the dock in his '63 pickup after our inter- oral histories from the older residents of Great Cranberry view ended. On the mailboat, a man who has a summer home Island, I quickly accepted The personal recollections of indi- on Great Cranberry spoke to me a bit. He asked if I was from viduals can relate an intimate history of any place, and Great the island, then from Maine. But I told him about Connecticut, Cranberry has been the base from which many generations described the foothills of the Berkshires; the small town where have shaped their lives. I grew up; the dairy farms that have since turned into neighbor- I had been to Great Cranberry Island only once before, to hoods. I can't hold claim to any place except for an old orchard interview Tud Bunker, a life-long resident and a central pres- that bore the scent of manure when they dug the foundation for ence in the daily life of the island I had walked the length of my family's home. the quiet island road, not fooled by the seeming emptiness of I left Great Cranberry with a large sense of the outsider that the houses, feeling for a rhythm of the place that would reveal I am, and could sense the containment of this community the way things worked there. And I was aware that no one real- beyond the visible borders of water and stone. I felt a little like ly likes to be revealed. for the obvious reasons: our own limita- I had peeked into the window of somebody's home. I had seen tions and the limits that an island imposes on a community. something beautiful and almost familiar, but something I could When I talked to Tud Bunker in the living room of his not hold as my own. home, his words became a landscape for me, and I had to chart -Patti D'Angelo '92 COA NEWS 13 WINTER 1992