Bicycling the frontier paths of the American Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean, we will leave from Rogers Avenue in Chicago or Indian Boundary Line (1816) and end at Cape Disappointment, Washington at the Pacific Ocean.

Beginning in June 2015, Don Pollack, Julia Pollack, Anders Pollack, Mark Cleveland, Pat Cleveland, Quincy Stewart, and Adrian Down will be traversing the landscapes of the American frontier via bicycle for over 3000miles focusing on the landscape and memory of western migration across North America. We will be living a nomadic life for over 2 months working on a project titled,  ‘Crossing the Great Divide’.

But this is not only about an escape into nature, – it is also about building a new relationship to society as well. We will be setting survey markers as we travel dedicated to remapping the Earth as a home for tolerance. Following some of the paths of Manifest Destiny, I am interested in developing a new and more inclusive narrative of our western experience. By linking digitally with our process, we will transcend limited notions of national or environmental borders and share our stories in a global dialog that brings us closer to each other and reconnects us to place.

While physical struggle will profoundly inform our experience of place we look forward to listening,– this will carry us forward on our journey. Travel, discussions, explorations, and interactions will become our nourishing source in the midst of a fragile peace in a modern world.

Don Pollack was born in Chicago and currently lives in Evanston, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Illinois where he studied Graphic Design and he received his Masters degree in Painting from the Ohio State University. His passion for the landscape can be tied to extensive hiking and photographic explorations of Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, Rocky Mountain National US Parks, Waterton, Kootenay and Banff Canadian National Parks. Long distance cycling eventually lead him to the conclusion that the time has come to recognize the act of riding a bicycle as an artistic gesture. By integrating slow travel though the landscape with a painting process, he has explored the natural spaces and personal histories that have come to define an individual sense of place. By integrating a web-dialogue component to his work, he has begun to explore the notion of a collective unconscious experience of landscape and place where by a fellow traveler may also experience nature through shared stories from remote locations. Currently, he is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Visual Communication at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Professor of Visual Communications at the Illinois Institute of Art.