I love experiments and surprises and thrive on these in my artistic practice. I use unframed raw canvas, taffeta, and satin to create large mixed media landscapes. I layer highly-pigmented color “soups” on the fabric and trace cast shadows from my immediate natural and built environment. Back in the studio, I dress these figures in …
Lakeside Labs and my rehabilitation… Upon arrival to Lakeside Labs I had an overwhelming feeling that I had just checking into a rehab center. Maybe it was the housing, communal dining, or all the friendly faces… either way I was out of my comfort zone and starting to have withdrawals from the life I once …
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“We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.” — Charles Darwin During my two-week residency at the Lakeside Lab AIR, I made a series of creative projects inspired by site-specific findings. Located alongside West Okoboji …
6/18 On Monday morning, with the animal behavior class, we released some sunfish, pike, bass and minnows that we had gathered for predator/prey experiments. It was a rainy morning, so we went to a coffee shop to talk about parenting behavior. During the discussion, Neil got a phone call from Dwight who restores natural prairies …
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Monday Hannah and Richelle and I go out with Neil’s class and collect samples of smaller organisms in the muck in one of the locations around the west side of the lake. I decided late last week that I wanted to make sure I saw as much as I could around the lake and soak …
Day one I was anxious the two days before departing for the residency up at lakeside labs. I didn’t sleep well. I didn’t pack until Sunday afternoon when I drove up and kept forgetting things. The drive up was perfect, sunny, and clear. Driving past the etched checkerboard of lines the Jeffersonian Grid, those mile …
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For more than 5,000 years, tallgrass prairies occupied 240 million acres of North America’s landscape, about 85% of the Midwest. All of this changed in the 1800s with European settlement. Settlers arrived with the goal of “breaking the land,” to replace the rolling prairies with productive farmland. They succeeded, and today, from region to region, …
To the being fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present as a halo. It consists of possibilities that are felt as a possession of what is now and here. In life that is truly life, everything overlaps and merges. – John Dewey Our word radical …
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WEEK 2 Day 7 Saturday, May 19 Worked on journal most of the day. After dinner went to Loon Lake. Tried another time lapse and some recordings of the lake, spillway and drainpipe in the ditch. Started moving the microphone to hear how sound changes with direction and when it bounces off of walls like …
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Being deeply immersed in the web of nature’s way over the last four weeks has been an enlightening experience. The opportunity to work with and learn from the scientists at Iowa Lakeside Lab has added another educational dimension to this experience for which I am grateful. Through self-reflection, contemplation, direct observation, identification guides, classroom participation, …
Read more “Indra’s Net: Interconnectedness and the Ecology of Okoboji”
Week 1 (June 9th-16th, 2017) My first week here at Lakeside Lab has been full of all types of exploring. From exploring the grounds where Lakeside Lab is located, the collections in the many labs, and the lands that surround West Lake Okoboji. I arrived during the evening of June 9th, where I briefly walked …
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During my second week at Lakeside, I spent a lot of time exploring specimen collections here and made some drawings based on my findings. In King Lab I found drawers of taxidermy birds, a cabinet housing an entomology collection, and a variety of plant specimens dried and labeled in clear boxes. I’m curious about collection …
Week two… where has the time gone. The past few days have been full of exploration including a field study on soil, sound recording above and below the water line, creating sound maps, creating light maps, exploring data gathered both digitally and through scientific testing, and a mild first of the year sun burn. In …
WEEK 1 Report: Reigniting the Wonder Lamp of the Natural World Upon arrival, I explored all of the labs and hiked the trails on the property to get a sense of where I would be living and working for the next month. Immediately, I developed a sense of place that felt like home. Home, in …
As an artist whose work is primarily inspired by the natural world, but whose understanding of ecology is more experiential than academic or scientific, the opportunity to sit in on classes at Lakeside Laboratory has been an invaluable experience. I’ve lived in the Midwest for less than a year, so I came into this residency …
Read more “At Lakeside, everyday conversations are peppered with impromptu lessons”
I got to spend this week tagging along with the various classes around campus and learning about the geography and ecosystems around Okoboji. I’m finishing this week full of inspiration and a thirst to learn more from all the great professors on campus. On my mind: diatoms, maps, and genetic algorithms.