@amysacka

End of summer and Love island Detroit lives on in @beltmag - featured today. Thank you Ed Simon for publishing! #loveisland

Did you know that to celebrate Michigan State Parks 100th anniversary, they developed an elaborate geocaching game where they hid 100 geocaches in state parks around the state. These geocaches have become my tour guide as I’ve explored the parks, some of them wildly creative… others hidden in unexpected corners of the park, encouraging me to explore and seek. One of them has a xylophone where you have to play “twinkle twinkle little star” to get a code that enables you to unlock the cache. It’s a pure delight. Within these caches - you take something, you leave something. I’ve left postcards with stamps asking people to write a love letter to the park they are in. I’m not sure how this will go but I try to be creative in the way I do my photographic work - hoping that others with an explorer’s mindset will be game to participate in something a little off beat. So it’s not just me doing the work, it’s a community project. Whatever the end result, I’ve expanded my mind to new pathways within our beautiful parks. I encourage you to look up the State Park’s geocache project and do it yourself. Here are some gems I found in Negwegon State Park, Hoeft State Park and Otsego State Park.

I have started my artist residency on Mackinac Island. For the past two days I’ve explored many of the wild paths off the tourist trail. On these paths, I’ve seen no one. On the way to these paths, I’ve occasionally passed people walking or riding their push bikes. The slow nature of a carless society makes you recognize your own breath, the sway of the trees, and the gravity and importance of your own body to get you to and from places. Everything in front of the curtain on Mackinac Island is picture perfect. Ice cream never tasted so good. Behind the curtain is the engine of workers, the sweat involved in making people feel perfect. I was riding around the island my first night nearly at sunset. Usually the bike path is crowded with tourists. The only two people who passed me were two workers in untucked uniforms, riding toward a disappearing sun, playing a reggae song a little too loudly, swerving and laughing their way to a windswept corner of the island most people will never see. #mackinacisland

“I love the Izod outlet!” The man at the booth next to me says to his group of friends. When venturing up north in Michigan, a stop at the outlet mall is par for the summer vacation course. We like a deal. We also like a down home breakfast. This diner promises to deliver - “happiness is served daily” - I cross my fingers the signs are leading me in the right direction. Marilyn Monroe bends over a table in the far corner on a mirrored wall, her dress billowing up around her, while Elvis peers over her shoulder for a look. The server piles up three plates of eggs and hash browns on her arm, places them down over snippets of up-north chatter. I hear words like “mini golf” and “arcade” which instantly remind me of my experience at the Ramada Inn last night. I have a small tinge of nostalgic joy walking above a steaming indoor pool to get to my room, past a vibrating massage chair and what looks like a Frogger or Centipede video game cubby hole console. I take a picture and send it to some old friends. “Remember when?” I write. While this isn’t exactly my idea of a happy place any longer, it certainly beats the Holiday Inn’s $215 price tag. “Don’t you have a last-minute rate?” I ask. “Triple A?” I plead before I get onto Hotwire and search the area, eventually settling into my room down the road. For old times’ sake I take an ice bucket down the hall and fill it up, half expecting a crew from Stranger Things to appear around the corner. I don’t know why this space evokes what might be called “Bittersweet,” a feeling that Susan Cain explores in her new book. It’s a tugging, a longing, a looking over the shoulder. I think about this as my server places a small plate of rye toast on my table. It is cut into triangles and looks like a perfectly fine piece of plain toast. The feeling comes up again when I turn over a corner and find it buttered on the other side. “Of course it is,” I think, as Elvis flashes me a grin. #diner

Love Letters to Michigan State Parks ❤️ Harrisville State #park

I’ve started to collect dozens of love letters to Belle Isle and other Michigan State Parks. If you’d like to participate here in Detroit find the box on the north end of the island (see red diamond on last photo). Inside the box you’ll find a small notebook with a simple ask. Here are some recent gems from the notebook. I plan to use these notes in tandem with my landscape photography from our beautiful Michigan State Parks.

End of summer. Up north days.

Thanks to everyone new who has followed. What a treat! Here’s a walkthrough of the piece. Excuse my breathing. Can’t help it. Lol. Also, a snippet of writing from it: “Early on in my relationship, I sent my boyfriend a song, “Belle Isle,” by Anna Burch. It’s a song drenched in summer love about a place that means a lot to me. Perhaps I was projecting hopes for our budding romance. Maybe I was trying to woo him. It worked. He liked the song (and me), and here we are two years later. This summer, I was reminded again of that song as I was walking through Belle Isle. I started seeing couples all over the place with that fresh love vibe. It was a feeling I felt lucky to still recognize, and I wanted to literally capture it. I began approaching couples that had that look about them — whether they were touching or laughing or sometimes kissing. What’s interesting is that the majority of couples I photographed told me they were new in their relationships, often less than two years in. I started to think about what that says about when and how we show affection in relationships — and how it physically materializes in the space or closeness between couples. I began to see the series “Love Island Detroit” as a metaphor for the place we all go to when we are newly in love. A space of equal parts romance, mystery and escape — where all you need is a towel, a little sunscreen, and the belief that anything is possible.”

Look what made it to this week’s Metro Times! Thanks @leedevito for publishing this!! #loveisland #belleisle #metrotimes