Artists colonize a harbor outpost

Bringing a history lesson to Bumpkin Island

Rachel Roberts and Gabe Moylan erected a shelter on the shore of Bumpkin Island for their project, ''Survival Kit.'' (Photos by Mark Wilson/Globe Staff)

Take the ferry to Bumpkin Island this weekend, and you may come across a woman lurking in the underbrush, wearing burlap covered with leaves. Don't be alarmed: She's not a kook. She's an artist. So are the men in kimonos staging lectures and the folks who may invite you to chat with them via tin-can telephones.

About 40 artists have spread out across the Boston Harbor Island for Labor Day weekend as part of a special event called the Bumpkin Island Art Encampment, featuring 10 art installations, sculptures, and performances. It's free and open to the public today through Monday; ferries are available to the island from various locations.

On Thursday, artists were busily setting up camps and installations all over the island, some hidden in the foliage and some out on the rocky beach.

They are working loosely around the theme of the 1862 Homestead Act, which promoted westward expansion in the United States. Megan Dickerson, one of the project's curators, notes that there were three basic rules for homesteaders: "Live on the land for five years, build a shelter, and improve the land. But what makes an improvement? It's vague."

Some of the artists are exploring the idea of home. With "Survival Kit," Gabe Moylan and Rachel Roberts are trying to create a space of domestic tranquility using only a Federal Emergency Management Association survival kit and what is available on the island.

Other pieces have been sparked by 19th century history. "Astrodime Transit Authority," the tin-can project, commemorates the 150th anniversary of the first official use of the trans-Atlantic cable - an 1858 telegram to President James Buchanan from Britain's Queen Victoria. At low tide, when it's possible to wade to the mainland, a group plans to set up a tin-can call from Bumpkin Island to nearby Hull. They will invite visitors to join in a reenactment, playing an extended game of telephone.

"It's about 500 meters, and we'll have people 30 feet apart" relaying the message, says artist Sam Smiley. "If the cable is taut, the sound vibrates along it, and it really works."

The Bumpkin Island Art Encampment is being staged by the Berwick Research Institute and Studio Soto, partnering with the Boston Harbor Island Alliance and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. It has been expanded from its first year in 2007, when it drew 200 to 300 visitors a day. Usually, closer to 100 people visit Bumpkin during an entire weekend, according to DCR spokeswoman Wendy Fox. DCR has stepped up ferry service to Bumpkin Island for the Labor Day weekend.

Orchestrated art events on this scale are relatively new to the Boston Harbor Islands, according to Susan Kane, islands district manager for the DCR. Last year, the Institute of Contemporary Art staged four of its own projects on as many islands.

"I think it's one of the most exciting annual events we've had," Kane says of the encampment. "We want a permanent place in the Boston Harbor Island for artists. The history of Boston can be told through the islands, and artists can have a large role in that and the reclamation of the islands."

On Bumpkin, that history includes a World War I-era naval training station. All that remains are the ruins of the mess hall, right beside an old stone farmhouse. One group of artists plans to take over those spaces, build a model city from seashells and twigs in the farmhouse, and dress up the mess hall.

"We want to play up this historic setting," says artist Lynn Lee. "In the mess hall, there's such an abandoned feeling. We want to hang up lightweight, brightly colored fabric, over-the-top curtains. It will be grandiose and beautiful."

Then there's that woman lurking in the underbrush, who also has an interest in Bumpkin Island's role in World War I. She's historian Hanna Rose Shell, one of three artists calling themselves "The Camoufleurs." Shell will wear a leaf-covered ghillie suit, a type of camouflage designed to look like heavy foliage that was used during World War I, and invite visitors to make their own.

Like the other artists camping out this weekend, Shell is using resources available on the island. "I'll garnish [the suit] with environmentally specific material, weaving oriental bittersweet (a type of vine) into the burlap," she said.

Projects will evolve and change throughout the weekend, depending on the resources that artists scavenge from the island.

The men in kimonos, who call themselves the New England Expeditionary Alliance, are spending the weekend exploring, cataloging what they find, and drawing their own scientific and spiritual conclusions about the island.

"The island is a collaborator in this project," says Bumpkin Island Art Encampment cocurator Jed Speare.

Cocurator Carolyn Lewenberg agreed. "This project is as much an expression of the island as it is of the artists themselves."