Matt McCormick:
The Great Northwest

Exhibition Statement

The Great Northwest at the Schneider Museum of Art was both an exhibition and an experimental documentary based on the re-creation of a 3,200 mile road-trip made in 1958 by four Seattle women who thoroughly documented their journey in an elaborate scrapbook…

Fifty years later, Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick found that scrapbook in a thrift store, and in 2010 set out on the road, following their route as precisely as possible and searching out every stop in which the ladies had documented.

In 1958, Bev, Berta, Sissie, and Clarice packed into a Plymouth and hit the road. Visiting tourist attractions and national parks in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon, they explored the Pacific Northwest just months before the construction of dams and the Interstate Highway System would drastically change the landscape. Along the way they took photographs, kept notes, and collected menus, brochures, post-cards, and receipts, all of which the organized into a crafty scrapbook.

Patiently shot with an observational and voyeuristic approach, The Great Northwest is a lyrical time-capsule that explored the fragility of history while documenting the present. Using only location sound recordings and void of any narration or music, the film paints a portrait of the region while exploring how the visual landscape of the region has changed over the past 50 years. While documenting transformations in culture, architecture, and land-use, the film explores the region’s relationship to natural resources, looks at the history of roads, and considers the impact of tourism on the history and development of the American West.

The Great Northwest has been screened at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, The Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Jerusalem International Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival, as well as in locations such as Albuquerque, Berwick-upon­Tweed, Buffalo, Calgary, Chicago, Montreal, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Seattle. The installation version has been shown at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and the Tacoma Art Museum, where it is part of the permanent collection (Tacoma Art Museum, Gift of Collect 21 NW, 20 12.6 A-1).

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