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 …
Thoughts of a landscape are you still there Everything about the summer sky is spectacular, showy, theatrical. The starts in the evening, the moons at midnight, the rays of the morning sun – they all shine with special brilliance. In summer, the waters of lakes and ponds mirror the clouds by day, the moon by …
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 …
Read more “The Prairie Flower and the radical nature of experimentation”
Brian Schorn’s exhibition titled “Practice, Rhythm and Ritual: Meditative Minimalism” at Crooked Tree Arts Center in Traverse City, MI featured 24 new works created by him, many of which were developed during his time as an Artist-in-Residence at Lakeside Lab. You can read more about the work Brian made at the Lab in his artist …
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 …
Read more “Exploring the Grounds, the Collections, and the Land”
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”