What’s the sound of temperature? How about humidity, radiation, and pressure, among the many ecological forces we experience but don’t hear? I considered questions like these as I collected environmental data using a device called the Arable Mark, which monitors weather, plants, soil, and irrigation, and created a set of five linked installations at Lakeside …
Scientists and artists practice imagining better, more meaningful, more integrated futures. There are many forces that threaten this practice: existentialism; injustice; denial; scarcity. These threatening forces can be investigated in balance with the practice of imagination when the art-science partnership is most effective. At Lakeside Lab, artists connect with scientists in effective partnerships that support …
This experience inspired me! I will be forever grateful for the two weeks I spent making and being outdoors at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory. I wish I was there at a different time since the pandemic made it a little hard to socialize the way I would have liked to, but I’m still grateful for …
Hello again, Iowa … … it’s been a minute! Although I now reside in the Twin Cities, I spent most of my life (outdoors!) in Iowa. I grew up in eastern Iowa, spending most summers floating the Maquoketa River, feeding ducks at Iowa City’s city park, and running to and around Pictured Rocks State Park. …
6/10 I began my drive to Iowa from Kalamazoo, Michigan on June 10th. It was my first trip into the state, and I really had no ideas of what Iowa or its landscape would be like. I was not altogether surprised that it was flat, but had not considered the vastness of the landscape before …
Read more “Mucky Areas, Animal Behavior, and the Value of Observation”
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 …
Read more “Visual Research and Spontaneous Studies from Life”
Week 2 – No comfort in a growth zone, no growth in a comfort zone The good news — no poison ivy yet! Sunday There was a lovely parents brunch today. Lisa Roti did a beautiful job decorating the room and Erika created a buffet that was really lovely. I’d like to add that the …
Read more “No comfort in a growth zone, no growth in a comfort zone”
Week 1 – Becoming Intimate With fear Face toward your fear, leap into your fear, and . . . smile at fear. But the main teaching is that you actually can stay with it, you actually can turn towards it, you actually can leap into it rather than having it set off this chain reaction. …
How do you quantify the value of a place, and determine the amount of space it deserves to claim? How do you measure the worth of a life, and the home and wellbeing that this life is worthy of? These are questions that I have found myself regularly wrestling with in different contexts. …
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”
What a mess and a blessing, to be back on the lake, expected to present a studio full of made objects for the benefit of expanding the students’ horizons. I am examining my anxiety levels with interest and frantically pasting tissue paper to sticks. I’ve become known for being a person who carries sticks around …
Read more “A Mess, a Blessing, a Giant Screen, and a lot of Sticks”
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 …