Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist: Amanda Maciuba
Mike Kamm
Author
04/21/2025
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Maciuba’s work is an exploration of the visible and invisible marks of human hands on the landscape. Her practice investigates human relationships with the environment over time, including the impacts of human-driven climate change.
The School of Art, Art History & Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students. The series is presented in collaboration with Sheldon Museum of Art.
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- [00:00:00.000]I'm Ashley Wilkinson I'm the director and curator of the Great Plains Art
- [00:00:09.120]Museum at the Center for Great Plains Studies thank you to the School of Art
- [00:00:13.440]art history and design for inviting us to collaborate on this lecture series
- [00:00:18.240]and many thanks to the Sheldon Museum of Art and their staff for hosting and for
- [00:00:22.680]this partnership I'd like to begin by acknowledging that the University of
- [00:00:27.420]Nebraska is a land-grant institution with campuses and programs on the past
- [00:00:32.280]present and future homelands of the Pawnee Ponca Ota Missouri Omaha Dakota
- [00:00:38.700]Lakota Cah Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples as well as those of the relocated Ho-Chunk
- [00:00:46.020]Sac and Fox and Iowa peoples the land we currently call Nebraska has always been
- [00:00:51.300]and will continue to be an indigenous homeland please take a moment to
- [00:00:55.800]consider the legacies of more than a hundred years of Native American
- [00:00:57.400]indigenous peoples the land we currently call Nebraska has always been
- [00:00:57.440]than a hundred and fifty years of displacement violence settlement and
- [00:01:01.840]displacement violence settlement and
- [00:01:01.840]displacement violence settlement and survival that bring us here today this
- [00:01:07.960]survival that bring us here today this
- [00:01:07.960]survival that bring us here today this acknowledgement and the centering of
- [00:01:09.640]acknowledgement and the centering of
- [00:01:09.640]acknowledgement and the centering of indigenous peoples is a start as we move
- [00:01:12.160]indigenous peoples is a start as we move
- [00:01:12.160]indigenous peoples is a start as we move forward together so we're thrilled to
- [00:01:15.100]forward together so we're thrilled to
- [00:01:15.100]forward together so we're thrilled to have Amanda MacCuba here at UNL as the
- [00:01:18.400]have Amanda MacCuba here at UNL as the
- [00:01:18.400]have Amanda MacCuba here at UNL as the Great Plains Art Museum's 2025 Elizabeth
- [00:01:21.220]Great Plains Art Museum's 2025 Elizabeth
- [00:01:21.220]Great Plains Art Museum's 2025 Elizabeth Rubendahl artist-in-residence this
- [00:01:23.260]This residency program provides an artist with a solo exhibition and the opportunity
- [00:01:28.460]to lead educational programs, interact with visitors from campus and the local community,
- [00:01:34.380]and create a commissioned artwork for the museum's permanent collection.
- [00:01:38.720]This program, which is in its 19th year, would not be possible without the generosity of
- [00:01:44.140]the Elizabeth Rubendall Foundation.
- [00:01:46.380]We are incredibly grateful to them for their support.
- [00:01:50.480]So after tonight's talk ends, we invite all of you to come down to the Great Plains Art
- [00:01:54.500]Museum.
- [00:01:55.500]You just have to head south, down 12th Street, we're just past the LEAD Center, to see Amanda's
- [00:02:00.920]solo exhibition, Watershed, and visit with her in her studio.
- [00:02:04.280]We'll also have refreshments available, I hear there will be a dairy store ice cream,
- [00:02:08.720]so please come on over.
- [00:02:10.340]If you can't make it tonight, Amanda will be in residence at the museum until the end
- [00:02:14.880]of the day this Saturday, and her exhibition will be on view through September 20th.
- [00:02:20.460]Now, to introduce our speaker tonight, Amanda Makuba was born and raised in the Buffalo,
- [00:02:26.620]New York area, and she graduated from the University at Buffalo with a degree in visual
- [00:02:31.340]studies.
- [00:02:32.420]She has an MFA in printmaking and a certificate of book arts from the University of Iowa.
- [00:02:37.540]Makuba's work is concerned with landscapes, communities, development practices, and environmental
- [00:02:42.580]practices throughout the United States.
- [00:02:45.100]Her work, which consists of drawing, printmaking, book arts, and animation, considers how humans
- [00:02:50.400]influence and attempt to change, destroy, and recreate the natural environments around
- [00:02:55.160]them.
- [00:02:56.420]She shows her work regularly throughout the United States and has participated in artist
- [00:03:00.800]residencies at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Fire Island National Seashore, the
- [00:03:07.220]Lawrence Art Center, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Kathmandu International Artist
- [00:03:12.080]Residency, and the Haystack Open Studio Residency.
- [00:03:15.620]Currently, she teaches printmaking, drawing, and book arts at Mount Holyoke College.
- [00:03:20.340]Please join me in welcoming Amanda Maccuba.
- [00:03:27.340]AMANDA MACCUBA: Hello.
- [00:03:30.500]Can everyone hear me?
- [00:03:33.120]Excellent.
- [00:03:36.040]Thank you for having me today.
- [00:03:39.300]I'm Amanda Maccuba.
- [00:03:41.380]I'm a print media and book artist currently based out of Massachusetts.
- [00:03:46.960]While I grew up in the Buffalo, New York area, I moved to Iowa City, Iowa.
- [00:03:50.280]I moved to Iowa for graduate school, which is where I know your professors Sophie and
- [00:03:54.720]Patrick from, who are not here because they have a very special arrival.
- [00:04:01.320]For the next five years, after graduate school, I lived in Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri, and
- [00:04:07.720]my work took a deep dive into an investigation of the Great Plains.
- [00:04:12.200]The work shared in Watershed, my show at the Great Plains Museum, is a culmination of eight
- [00:04:18.040]years of research on the Tallgrass Prairie.
- [00:04:20.220]I'm so grateful to the UNL Department of Art, the Sheldon Museum, the Great Plains Museum,
- [00:04:28.400]the Rubendall family, and curator Ashley Wilkinson for inviting me here to share the work in
- [00:04:33.780]a space that cares about these landscapes as much as I do.
- [00:04:40.720]I'm currently on a year-long sabbatical from teaching at Mount Holyoke College so I can
- [00:04:46.140]share out my Missouri River work.
- [00:04:50.160]Starting a new body of work about the Great Lakes Watershed.
- [00:04:52.920]I know there are a lot of undergraduates and graduate students in the audience so I'm going
- [00:04:57.280]to use this moment, this talk, to share how my work evolved through my early years as
- [00:05:03.260]emerging artist into the current work you can view now and also where I hope it will
- [00:05:08.820]go moving forward.
- [00:05:11.520]And so whenever I talk about my work I always kind of talk about where I have lived.
- [00:05:17.120]So geographically this is where I grew up outside of Buffalo.
- [00:05:20.100]New York part of my family is also historically from southern Ontario.
- [00:05:25.040]So I basically lived in Canada over the summers on that little peninsula with the hearts sticking
- [00:05:30.980]out into Lake Erie.
- [00:05:34.440]I just added this slide yesterday because my current work in my current work I'm reconsidering
- [00:05:40.880]how growing up immersed in such a significant body of water has continued to impact my work
- [00:05:46.980]to this day.
- [00:05:47.980]And in fact someone asked me like why water?
- [00:05:50.040]And I was like oh Lake Erie, that's why.
- [00:05:55.720]I want to acknowledge that the lands I consider my home in western New York is the territory
- [00:06:00.860]of the Seneca Nation, a member of the Haudenosaunee Six Nations Confederacy.
- [00:06:05.960]The northern shores of Lake Erie are the traditional territories of the Attawadarran, the Haudenosaunee
- [00:06:11.540]and the Anishinaabe peoples.
- [00:06:13.280]And currently the communities of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory and the Mississaugas
- [00:06:19.980]have the credit.
- [00:06:20.980]Okay, so now we go back to like growing up.
- [00:06:26.580]I lived in the house in the middle.
- [00:06:29.620]This is a suburb, Clarence, New York.
- [00:06:31.580]It's outside of Buffalo.
- [00:06:33.020]I spent the first 18 to 25 years of my life there.
- [00:06:38.220]My curiosity about place in the built environments we create for ourselves really started here.
- [00:06:44.880]I lived on the rural edge of an affluent and rapidly expanding suburb.
- [00:06:49.920]I can remember even as a young child, a sense of uneasiness as I watched the suburban develops
- [00:06:57.480]come up one after another, getting closer and closer to the edge of the town.
- [00:07:03.580]And then later the palatial McMansions starting to encroach on the agricultural edges.
- [00:07:10.940]And here's some examples of some work I made as an undergrad.
- [00:07:14.680]Please note the use of the vinyl right there, that'll make a reappearance later.
- [00:07:19.860]When I first started out as an artist, I never really knew what to make my work about.
- [00:07:24.960]I struggled with the concept behind it.
- [00:07:29.040]However, at some point in my undergraduate education, I came to the realization that
- [00:07:33.740]I was most happy making work about what I knew, specifically exploring, researching
- [00:07:40.500]and critiquing the landscape I grew up in and the associated lifestyles that were perpetuated
- [00:07:46.580]in contemporary suburbia.
- [00:07:49.800]I consider myself a place-based, or a research-based artist.
- [00:07:57.620]My work is narrative and it stems from my experiences in a place or my interest in the
- [00:08:02.300]history of it and how it became its present.
- [00:08:06.120]My research can consist of many things, including time at a local library or historical society,
- [00:08:12.300]hours spent combing through Google's maps, conversation with local community members
- [00:08:17.080]and educators, or just driving around getting lost.
- [00:08:19.740]In the neighborhoods and landscapes around me.
- [00:08:23.440]And here's one of those moments driving around getting lost in some pretty beige suburbs
- [00:08:28.200]in Iowa City, Iowa.
- [00:08:32.400]I often start a project by seeing what Google Maps has to offer.
- [00:08:36.360]It's one of the best places to get an aerial perspective of a place, particularly if you
- [00:08:41.180]haven't had the opportunity to visit it yet.
- [00:08:44.140]On the lower left is a screenshot of the day the Google car photographed me and I photographed
- [00:08:49.680]it back in Lawrence, Kansas.
- [00:08:52.580]Unfortunately you do have to go into the archive view to see it now, but it was possibly
- [00:08:57.880]the peak of my artistic performance art.
- [00:09:02.940]Pretty proud of that.
- [00:09:04.960]I will also often go to local archives in locations I'm interested in and search through
- [00:09:10.380]their map collections and historical documents.
- [00:09:15.480]Looking at maps and past land use documents is a good way to see how
- [00:09:19.620]communities have changed over time.
- [00:09:23.060]I really love government websites.
- [00:09:26.680]The U.S. Geological Society is my favorite and it has some excellent maps.
- [00:09:34.220]I also really like the FEMA flood insurance maps.
- [00:09:38.020]You can look at the 100 and 500-year floodplains for most of the United States there.
- [00:09:43.100]I was just poking around, making sure those websites still exist this afternoon, and as
- [00:09:48.320]far as I can tell, they do.
- [00:09:49.560]Which is a good thing.
- [00:09:53.720]I also just do a lot of reading about local history and ecology, preferably recommended
- [00:09:59.080]by someone who lives in the area, if it's not my home already.
- [00:10:04.320]These are just two reading lists from past body of work and a future body of work.
- [00:10:09.720]So the beginning of my practice is this combination of going out and about and wandering, randomly
- [00:10:16.300]chatting with people I come across and seeing what they have to say.
- [00:10:19.500]And more traditional research like reading and visiting archives.
- [00:10:26.920]A theme that consistently runs throughout my work and that I use when I am approaching
- [00:10:31.940]a location for the first time is ideas of orientation and disorientation.
- [00:10:37.660]I'm interested in how people locate themselves either in a temporary space or in their home.
- [00:10:42.980]I'm curious about the geographic and emotional landmarks that allow people to place themselves
- [00:10:49.440]in both a community and the landscape.
- [00:10:52.180]When I'm interested in starting a body of work about a new place, I often begin by creating
- [00:10:58.740]an artist book that describes my own feelings of disorientation and eventual reorientation
- [00:11:04.740]there.
- [00:11:06.520]This book speaks to some of the confusion I felt when I moved away from Buffalo and
- [00:11:10.760]left Lake Erie behind for the first time ever.
- [00:11:13.720]I no longer had a large body of water to orient myself to, both geographically and
- [00:11:19.380]emotionally.
- [00:11:22.000]I try to pay attention to this disorientation and keep track of all the ways I reorient
- [00:11:27.540]myself and begin to call this new environment home.
- [00:11:31.180]I compare where I previously lived to this new location, finding similarities I can latch
- [00:11:36.400]onto, but also embracing and exploring the dramatic differences.
- [00:11:41.620]I spend a lot of time studying maps and aimlessly driving around.
- [00:11:47.880]As the crow does not fly,
- [00:11:49.320]which is this artist's book, describes I moved from the Midwest and back to New England area,
- [00:11:55.820]specifically Western Massachusetts.
- [00:11:58.060]This book shares what I found defined the landscape as I worked to become a local myself.
- [00:12:03.680]Upon arrival, I was struck by the larger-than-life things that crossed the Connecticut River
- [00:12:08.500]Valley, the plains of a local Air Force base hovering above my house, to the ancient dinosaur
- [00:12:14.240]footprints that crisscrossed the valley.
- [00:12:17.140]The title, As the Crow Does Not Fly,
- [00:12:19.260]refers to one of the biggest differences I noticed between the Midwest and New England:
- [00:12:24.540]ease of getting from place to place.
- [00:12:26.780]In the middle of the United States, there were no mountain ranges to disrupt the grid
- [00:12:30.660]of infrastructure marching west over the landscape.
- [00:12:33.760]However, in New England, I found that it's difficult to get anywhere as the crow flies.
- [00:12:39.260]A theme I'll talk about more later is my interest in how humans alter the landscape, a specific
- [00:12:49.200]feature of the built environment that does this pretty dramatically that I often return
- [00:12:54.600]to is parking lots.
- [00:12:58.100]This is a small fraction of the parking lots I've drawn in the last 15 years, most of them
- [00:13:03.260]in the first few years of graduate school in Iowa.
- [00:13:06.360]I was both trying to reorient myself geographically, but also trying to reorient my entire artist
- [00:13:12.600]practice away from the suburbs of the mid-Atlantic and into something new.
- [00:13:17.600]I was interested in how prevalent.
- [00:13:19.140]Yet almost unnoticed, these structures are within our everyday built environment, no
- [00:13:25.240]matter where in the country you are living.
- [00:13:28.380]The work highlights the overabundance while also representing a feeling of dislocation
- [00:13:34.000]experienced by these maze like monstrosities of developmental glut that have become fixtures
- [00:13:40.240]on the American landscape.
- [00:13:43.880]So I was kind of I was thinking a little bit about this.
- [00:13:49.080]A little more critically and I was thinking about how I was I was making really specific
- [00:13:53.540]work about Buffalo and then I moved out and I zoomed out as well with my work making something
- [00:13:59.300]a little more broad and generic when I changed locations.
- [00:14:03.420]Eventually I moved from this broad topic back down into specificity.
- [00:14:09.960]But I think this moment was important when I was trying to adjust and adapt my practice
- [00:14:13.700]to a new place and I see that in my practice moving forward it's a lot of zooming
- [00:14:19.020]in and zooming back out between details and broader views.
- [00:14:28.080]One formal concern that these works share is my obsession with the irregularities of
- [00:14:34.880]the artist's hand.
- [00:14:36.640]I want to highlight this evidence of my own hand within the work.
- [00:14:40.940]I'm interested in unintentional errors and how that gives it an element of individuality
- [00:14:48.960]I lace my own personality and memories into subjects gathered from everyday landscapes,
- [00:14:55.520]which often can be described as cold and methodical.
- [00:14:59.120]The fuzziness and erraticness of the hand-drawn line, in this case a trace monotype line,
- [00:15:05.880]gives this amalgamation of referenceless parking lots an anchor in both my own reality and
- [00:15:11.380]memory and also the viewer's own personal experiences in similar spaces.
- [00:15:18.900]One of the most important themes that runs throughout the majority of the remainder of
- [00:15:27.340]my work is a consideration of climate change and how humans alter their environments around
- [00:15:32.900]them, sometimes for the better, but often for the worse.
- [00:15:37.400]These prints refer to both the aggressive suburban building practices and commercial
- [00:15:41.800]agricultural development I witnessed throughout my time living in Iowa City.
- [00:15:46.580]This series of prints is called Peripheral Visions.
- [00:15:48.840]This is how I feel like both the agricultural sector and suburban housing developments look
- [00:15:55.280]towards the future.
- [00:15:57.180]They're only looking at the most immediate profits and not the long-term side effects.
- [00:16:01.500]The now is all that is important.
- [00:16:03.760]They're gleefully ignoring the effects of their actions on the landscape and future
- [00:16:08.120]residents of the communities in and around them.
- [00:16:12.160]Much of my work from this time, essentially my thesis from graduate school, refers to
- [00:16:17.780]areas
- [00:16:18.780]around Iowa City that were impacted by a 500-year flood, a flood that occurred five years before
- [00:16:24.960]I arrived in Iowa.
- [00:16:26.940]So it's from my perspective as an outsider.
- [00:16:29.860]These works question why I would be so concerned with a natural disaster I didn't ever experience.
- [00:16:35.620]These are also when I spent a lot of time on the FEMA website doing a lot of research.
- [00:16:42.060]Spending three years in Iowa City in the footprint of a climate change-enhanced 500-year flood
- [00:16:48.100]is really
- [00:16:48.720]what reoriented my work pretty dramatically towards the natural environment and the tension
- [00:16:55.060]between human communities and their natural surroundings in the face of climate change.
- [00:17:04.040]The frequency and consistency of continuing weather-related emergencies, we've got one
- [00:17:10.260]right now even, I witnessed while living in Iowa City in the aftermath of a 500-year flood
- [00:17:17.000]paralleled the physical and
- [00:17:18.660]emotional remnants of that historic event.
- [00:17:21.120]As a post-flood resident, I mostly witnessed the reconstruction of the infrastructure.
- [00:17:26.260]However, every spring the river was sandbagged just in case the water got too high again.
- [00:17:31.920]Every year buildings were evacuated and the flood-proof walls went up and then came back
- [00:17:35.940]down.
- [00:17:36.940]In these works, I'm interested in this irony of rebuilding the same buildings on almost
- [00:17:42.540]the same ground that flooded in 2008 and how these actions demonstrate the stubborn perversity
- [00:17:48.600]of American developmental procedures in the face of natural disasters, disasters often
- [00:17:54.340]brought about by climate change.
- [00:17:58.000]Cities and structures are still being erected without a thought to their longevity without
- [00:18:03.280]taking into account our long-term effects on the environment.
- [00:18:08.160]My work confronts this willful ignorance, the storms, and other often weather-related
- [00:18:13.840]disasters that are occurring more and more frequently throughout the United States.
- [00:18:18.540]And so this is the start of the work that is on display at the Great Plains Museum,
- [00:18:25.560]and I would love to see you guys there because it's way more fun to see it in person.
- [00:18:30.940]It's got lots of small details and layers and textures, but this is kind of where my
- [00:18:37.360]Missouri River work starts.
- [00:18:42.000]I can trace the start of this work, put your best foot forward and take two steps back
- [00:18:46.760]to my move to the Midwest.
- [00:18:48.480]As many of you local Nebraskans probably know, the Midwest and Great Plains is known
- [00:18:53.740]as one of the least ecologically diverse parts of the United States, mostly due to environmental
- [00:19:01.060]destruction, brought about by westward expansion, settler colonization, and the impacts of large
- [00:19:06.860]commercial monocrops on the landscape.
- [00:19:09.800]I found that living in a place like that forces you to reconsider how the land around you
- [00:19:14.980]got that way.
- [00:19:16.740]While living in the middle of the country.
- [00:19:18.420]I was very attracted to the so-called rolling hills and prairies.
- [00:19:23.180]Upon research, upon getting really into my research into the area, the realization of
- [00:19:28.420]how much of what I thought was natural was actually managed and cultivated.
- [00:19:32.940]How much we had altered the landscape since colonization was, I found personally, incomprehensible.
- [00:19:43.580]For example, of the 30 million acres of prairie that covered the state of
- [00:19:48.360]Iowa at the time of European settlement, less than one-tenth of one percent remains.
- [00:19:55.400]Put Your Best Foot Forward and Takes Two Steps Back is a print installation that was started
- [00:20:00.680]in eastern Kansas after time spent researching remnants of an original and recreated prairies
- [00:20:06.240]and wetlands.
- [00:20:07.860]It later expanded to include the wetlands of western Massachusetts and western New York
- [00:20:12.280]when I moved back east.
- [00:20:14.660]The prints were created with 14 different copper plate etchings
- [00:20:18.300]layered together at different transparencies.
- [00:20:21.800]Viewers are encouraged to stand within the installation and feel enveloped by the intensity
- [00:20:26.300]of visual information surrounding them or step back and notice the fading away of the
- [00:20:31.940]imagery at either end.
- [00:20:34.180]The push and pull of appearing and disappearing marks is meant to represent how humans constantly
- [00:20:39.920]erase and rebuild their natural surroundings and how nature responds to this push and pull
- [00:20:46.220]with its own coping mechanisms and recovery.
- [00:20:48.240]The marks that communities make on the natural world can be both beautiful and awful, and
- [00:20:54.580]I want to explore that in my work.
- [00:20:57.040]In the Great Plains, I'm particularly interested in how the prairies and wetlands were drained
- [00:21:01.240]and plowed up for farming during westward expansion.
- [00:21:05.040]The landscape of the Great Plains has become a canvas that communities think they can change
- [00:21:09.500]at will.
- [00:21:10.760]Through the repeated marks of etched lines layered over top of each other in different
- [00:21:14.880]combinations, I call attention to the scale of
- [00:21:18.180]how we remake the landscape around us, and how natural marks and patterns exist within
- [00:21:23.800]and without our own regimented mark making on the landscape.
- [00:21:33.180]And here is an example of one of my research trips that kind of sustains my practice.
- [00:21:41.700]This was my wetland prairie tour of 2019.
- [00:21:45.240]The western terminus was the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center
- [00:21:48.120]in Nebraska City, which I'll talk about a little later.
- [00:21:51.720]This trip heavily influenced the previous work,
- [00:21:53.940]but also a lot of the work coming up.
- [00:21:57.000]These are just a fraction of the wildlife refuges, state parks,
- [00:22:01.740]and residencies that I visited and that played a part in my research
- [00:22:05.880]in the Tallgrass Prairie.
- [00:22:09.100]And if you can see this blue piece that is a little cut off,
- [00:22:12.840]but this is actually a print that is inspired by Chalco Hills Recreation.
- [00:22:18.060]Center, just to the, I believe, northeast of us in Lincoln.
- [00:22:22.800]This artist book, which is in the show, started out
- [00:22:30.900]as a collaboration between the Kansas City poet Mary Wharf and I.
- [00:22:35.380]Both of us wanted to work together in a traditional artist-poet relationship
- [00:22:41.020]and create a book based around the theme of water.
- [00:22:46.080]We were interested in how water shapes
- [00:22:48.000]our landscape and how we engage with our environment through water.
- [00:22:53.180]Kaw Point, the physical inspiration, is located in Kansas City, Kansas,
- [00:22:57.480]at the point where the Missouri River and the Kaw River meet.
- [00:23:01.380]Geographically, it marks the state line between Kansas and Missouri.
- [00:23:05.580]Historically, it has a rich history for the indigenous peoples
- [00:23:08.620]that once resided there, the Missouria, Kickapoo, Oto,
- [00:23:12.620]Kanza, Osage, Shawnee, and Delaware.
- [00:23:15.900]In later colonial history,
- [00:23:17.940]it is the point where Lewis and Clark set out--
- [00:23:20.140]one of the points from where Lewis and Clark set out from
- [00:23:23.380]on their journey west.
- [00:23:25.120]Physically, the meeting of these two large waters
- [00:23:27.880]with very different characteristics
- [00:23:30.920]is visually unusual as well as beautiful.
- [00:23:34.360]Riverine's Point explores difficult aspects
- [00:23:36.900]of human relationships with rivers
- [00:23:38.700]and also offers a way to ground our interactions
- [00:23:42.740]with these rivers from a more humble place,
- [00:23:45.340]a place of awe, gratitude, and reciprocity.
- [00:23:47.880]The artist book Riverine's Point eventually transitioned.
- [00:23:53.480]So I've been working on this body of work for like eight years.
- [00:23:55.760]And if you're working on one artist book for eight years,
- [00:23:58.600]it's not a lot to show.
- [00:24:00.820]So at the same time, I would work on larger prints
- [00:24:03.160]with the similar imagery so I could have shows
- [00:24:05.740]at the same time.
- [00:24:07.500]So this is tributary, the one on the right scene here
- [00:24:12.780]is kind of the concurrent larger print installation that talks
- [00:24:17.820]about similar things, but it's more of a critical exploration
- [00:24:23.500]of the history of the Missouri River watershed.
- [00:24:27.400]And it's how I'm thinking about how water has shaped
- [00:24:31.840]the American landscape with it in relation to, again,
- [00:24:36.540]the colonization history of America
- [00:24:39.580]and specifically Manifest Destiny.
- [00:24:42.640]To me, Lewis and Clark's journey west
- [00:24:44.840]along the Missouri River exemplifies
- [00:24:47.760]part of forced reorganization of the people
- [00:24:50.560]in ecological environments of the West.
- [00:24:53.140]I see this reorganization of the river system,
- [00:24:56.100]its human and non-human inhabitants,
- [00:24:58.440]and the landscape itself as the beginning
- [00:25:00.640]of many of the ecological and environmental justice issues
- [00:25:03.980]that we see today.
- [00:25:07.240]As I worked, again, several years on this,
- [00:25:10.240]ongoing research, unlearning, and reflection
- [00:25:13.280]through this project has led me to realize
- [00:25:15.280]how vitally important it is to go beyond
- [00:25:17.700]the initial explorations of plants in the environment
- [00:25:21.000]and acknowledge, again, the original inhabitants
- [00:25:23.340]of the Missouri River watershed.
- [00:25:25.140]It has led to a clearer understanding
- [00:25:27.240]of what kinds of land relations, capitalism, and colonialism
- [00:25:31.380]that have led to human-induced environmental destruction.
- [00:25:36.580]While my early research was more focused on the environment,
- [00:25:42.460]the use of land for settler capitalist purposes
- [00:25:45.160]also requires the removal and displacement
- [00:25:47.640]of indigenous populations, including those that still
- [00:25:50.860]reside in the area today and who continue
- [00:25:53.200]to struggle against expropriation
- [00:25:55.260]and environmental harm.
- [00:25:57.240]It's impossible to discuss human impacts
- [00:26:00.640]on the environment in the Great Plain
- [00:26:02.520]without acknowledging and centering my own place
- [00:26:05.080]in its alteration as a white woman
- [00:26:07.080]and acknowledging the environmental injustice
- [00:26:09.480]of forcible removal from unceded lands in the United States.
- [00:26:17.580]OK, now I'm going to talk a little bit about process.
- [00:26:22.620]So the print installations are a mix
- [00:26:28.020]of a laser cut, woodcuts, and etchings.
- [00:26:31.500]And so as an artist, I started out
- [00:26:34.680]doing super intense woodcuts by hand.
- [00:26:37.620]But as you get older, you discover that, oh, I
- [00:26:40.260]want to be an artist forever, but I also
- [00:26:42.140]need to take care of my art.
- [00:26:43.620]And so I started out doing super intense woodcuts by hand.
- [00:26:47.520]I wanted to take care of my body.
- [00:26:48.960]And so I have transitioned into laser cutting all of my woodcuts.
- [00:26:55.320]But it's really important that character of my drawn hand
- [00:26:59.380]shows through, even though I'm laser cutting them.
- [00:27:02.460]So I usually draw my prints, bring them into Adobe Illustrator,
- [00:27:09.800]and then manipulate them in Adobe Illustrator.
- [00:27:13.180]So that's an example of a drawing, and then export them
- [00:27:17.460]to the laser file.
- [00:27:18.480]And so this is actually a kind of abstraction
- [00:27:21.660]of where we are now.
- [00:27:22.920]So I made it specifically for this show,
- [00:27:25.620]and so I wanted to put the major rivers that you guys have.
- [00:27:28.840]So there's Salt Creek on the left,
- [00:27:30.780]the Platte River in the middle, and the Missouri on the right.
- [00:27:35.100]And I try to use rivers in places I've seen,
- [00:27:39.180]but sometimes I am just using Google Maps.
- [00:27:41.320]So it's really exciting to fly into Omaha and look at my Google
- [00:27:46.100]maps as I was pulling out of the airport and realized, oh,
- [00:27:51.490]I've drawn that lake before.
- [00:27:53.770]So yeah, you can see that little fake oxbow.
- [00:27:57.830]Maybe it was a real oxbow at one point,
- [00:27:59.890]but it's up there in the upper right of that print.
- [00:28:03.370]But this is what--
- [00:28:04.890]I do rainbow rolls, and I roll up my ink.
- [00:28:08.650]I roll up these woodcuts, and I mix and match
- [00:28:10.850]all these different plates I have together.
- [00:28:14.210]I usually take over, if I can, an entire studio.
- [00:28:18.290]There's maybe 30 prints on display at the Great Plains,
- [00:28:21.950]but there's probably 80 in the entire series.
- [00:28:25.670]I pick and choose which ones make sense,
- [00:28:28.010]or in this case, the curator and installers did this time.
- [00:28:32.270]But when I'm making them, I lay them all out,
- [00:28:34.370]and I have all my plates, my etching plates,
- [00:28:37.370]which are still done by hand.
- [00:28:39.350]I retain my hand for the etching.
- [00:28:42.110]I spend a whole day mixing my color palettes up.
- [00:28:46.310]I roll out the ink palettes.
- [00:28:48.710]And then I just kind of go to town.
- [00:28:52.110]I have all the plates made already,
- [00:28:54.330]but I don't know how they're going to go together.
- [00:28:57.470]I kind of decide that in the moment, looking at a print.
- [00:29:00.710]I'm like, ooh, this green milkweed needs an orange map,
- [00:29:05.810]and this green map needs some prairie roots in red.
- [00:29:10.670]And so it's kind of an intuitive--
- [00:29:12.050]in the moment, at the press decision with all of the plates
- [00:29:16.290]that I've made ahead of time.
- [00:29:19.430]So here's just some examples of a plate rolled up in--
- [00:29:23.570]that looks like a ghost of this text plate in the background.
- [00:29:29.690]There's this negative space.
- [00:29:32.330]This was a mistake plate that I love.
- [00:29:36.990]It's in green.
- [00:29:38.870]And here's just some examples of some of the prints.
- [00:29:41.450]You can see--
- [00:29:41.990]the imagery repeating.
- [00:29:43.250]Some is ghosts.
- [00:29:44.270]Some is-- there's some trace monotypes mixed in there.
- [00:29:47.670]Here's the pedestrian bridge across the Missouri
- [00:29:53.930]River in Omaha.
- [00:29:54.590]OK, so that's kind of what my process when I'm printing
- [00:30:01.990]is like a little bit.
- [00:30:03.310]I'm happy to talk about that more
- [00:30:04.730]if you have any questions later.
- [00:30:06.150]For this show, there is one--
- [00:30:11.930]deeper installation.
- [00:30:13.010]And I want to read this quote by Aldo Leopold to introduce it.
- [00:30:18.650]"Nearby is the graceful loop of an old, dry creek bed.
- [00:30:22.650]The new creek bed is ditched straight as a ruler.
- [00:30:26.030]It has been uncurled by the county engineer
- [00:30:29.150]to hurry the runoff.
- [00:30:31.110]On the hill in the background are contoured strip crops.
- [00:30:34.590]They have been curled by the erosion engineer
- [00:30:37.310]to retard the runoff.
- [00:30:39.590]The water must be confused by so much."
- [00:30:41.870]And that's from "San County Almanac," sketches here
- [00:30:46.210]and there by Aldo Leopold.
- [00:30:49.830]And this is the work, "The Water Must
- [00:30:51.590]Be Confused by So Much Advice."
- [00:30:56.030]"San County Almanac" is often considered an early study
- [00:30:59.550]and critique of the environmental movement.
- [00:31:02.610]The title of this paper installation
- [00:31:05.990]is inspired by that passage.
- [00:31:08.270]And I'm really interested in how he gives the water,
- [00:31:11.810]the agency, to be confused by the conflicting messages
- [00:31:16.370]humans are giving it and trying to control it.
- [00:31:20.910]And so this work, I was, again, I
- [00:31:24.470]was using Google Maps to look at parts of the Missouri River.
- [00:31:28.010]But I was specifically focusing on the parts of the Missouri
- [00:31:31.010]River that I had never seen.
- [00:31:33.690]So I'm very familiar with Kansas City through South Dakota,
- [00:31:37.610]Vermilion, South Dakota, kind of, but moving past
- [00:31:41.750]into Montana and farther north, I've never seen that part.
- [00:31:46.410]Well, I guess I've been to North Dakota, too.
- [00:31:49.390]But the Missouri River is considered the longest river
- [00:31:53.890]in the United States at approximately 2,341 miles
- [00:31:57.670]in length.
- [00:31:58.310]However, due to human manipulation
- [00:32:01.430]in the last 300 years, it has been shortened
- [00:32:03.750]by approximately 200 miles.
- [00:32:06.650]While natural changes like periodic flooding and meanders
- [00:32:09.810]have always occurred throughout--
- [00:32:11.690]a river system, dredging, channelization, and dam
- [00:32:15.350]building have irrevocably altered
- [00:32:17.510]the course of the river and the lands
- [00:32:19.430]around it in the 20th century.
- [00:32:21.710]And that's what this piece is kind of showing.
- [00:32:24.590]I have pivot crop circle irrigation marks in the back.
- [00:32:29.390]I have a lot of fencing that we as humans
- [00:32:31.750]use to try to control the landscape.
- [00:32:35.810]And I did-- don't worry--
- [00:32:39.170]oh, is it going to work?
- [00:32:41.630]I cut those out by hand.
- [00:32:42.950]I also used a laser cutter.
- [00:32:45.650]You guys have such fantastic laser cutters here.
- [00:32:47.690]I didn't think you needed a very long video about that,
- [00:32:50.450]but it is a little fun.
- [00:32:51.950]So these are drawings that looks like a milkweed drawing.
- [00:32:55.790]And I, again, convert them into files.
- [00:32:58.910]I actually used a lot of the files
- [00:33:02.510]I made for the woodcuts, changed them a little bit more,
- [00:33:06.410]and then got them to cut them out in paper
- [00:33:09.350]so they could become part of--
- [00:33:11.570]that in paper installation.
- [00:33:15.410]I do tend to abuse my laser cutters.
- [00:33:18.230]I only go in over the summer when there's no students there.
- [00:33:20.930]So I can kind of use all three at once
- [00:33:23.510]and cut out a lot of paper.
- [00:33:24.710]Confluence.
- [00:33:29.990]This is, again-- so I started using vinyl as an undergrad.
- [00:33:34.070]And I always-- I loved it.
- [00:33:35.570]I never-- I wanted--
- [00:33:37.390]I always wanted to use it again, and it never felt right.
- [00:33:39.890]And finally--
- [00:33:41.510]for this piece, I found a reason--
- [00:33:43.450]a beautiful glass wall this fall for this piece, Confluence.
- [00:33:47.510]So these are all vinyl stickers.
- [00:33:49.150]Again, I've used the same files as I
- [00:33:51.230]used in the paper installation.
- [00:33:54.790]I just kind of uncurled them, like Aldo Leopold
- [00:33:58.430]was talking about, and used a vinyl cutter to cut them out
- [00:34:02.930]and stick them in.
- [00:34:04.870]It's meant to look like kind of prairie roots or a river
- [00:34:08.270]delta.
- [00:34:09.730]It is-- again, the Missouri--
- [00:34:11.450]the Missouri River, but also barbed wire.
- [00:34:14.450]And so by kind of putting those two things together,
- [00:34:17.730]I'm interested in, again, the impossibility
- [00:34:20.390]of trying to control water with barbed wire
- [00:34:23.030]as a metaphor for how we use barbed water--
- [00:34:26.330]or barbed wire and other human-made interventions
- [00:34:29.510]to manipulate the environment around us.
- [00:34:32.210]Of course, you can't control water with barbed wire.
- [00:34:34.810]My goal is to create conversation about our
- [00:34:41.390]past attempts to control the natural world around us
- [00:34:44.790]in future attempts to mend and adapt
- [00:34:47.570]this landscape we have created.
- [00:34:51.430]For those of you--
- [00:34:53.030]no, everyone-- well, for those of you
- [00:34:54.410]who aren't aware, an artist's residency--
- [00:34:56.410]let me see what time I'm at--
- [00:34:59.270]is an amazing opportunity where the artist is able to travel.
- [00:35:03.310]And that's what I'm on right now.
- [00:35:05.910]They go to a place that supports the creation of work
- [00:35:08.050]and research outside of the normal life.
- [00:35:11.330]So I'm in Massachusetts, and a lot of my work
- [00:35:13.370]is about not Massachusetts.
- [00:35:15.170]I use residencies to make and research my work.
- [00:35:20.370]And I want to talk about--
- [00:35:21.870]the one that specifically impacted this one
- [00:35:24.050]was the Kimmel Harding Nelson residency in Nebraska City.
- [00:35:29.450]Emerging artist, that's an excellent one to apply to.
- [00:35:33.610]You get housing, you get a studio,
- [00:35:36.690]and they basically just leave you alone to hang out
- [00:35:39.150]and do whatever you want.
- [00:35:40.770]And for printmakers, there's also
- [00:35:41.270]a little letterpress there.
- [00:35:42.570]Many of the works included in both the tributary print
- [00:35:50.290]installation in the show specifically
- [00:35:54.630]reference the summer of 2019 when
- [00:35:56.590]I was an artist in residence in Nebraska City.
- [00:36:00.430]I arrived in Nebraska to find that I had again
- [00:36:03.310]showed up to a location in the aftermath of historic levels
- [00:36:06.770]of flooding.
- [00:36:07.810]The Missouri River had flooded its banks in the spring,
- [00:36:11.210]and the water had yet to recede in many of the areas
- [00:36:13.990]I had planned to visit.
- [00:36:16.610]Many of the refuges I had planned to go to were closed.
- [00:36:20.690]My research needed to adjust in the moment.
- [00:36:23.090]I spent the majority of the residency
- [00:36:25.170]driving between different flooded locations
- [00:36:27.890]as well as unexpectedly expanding my research up
- [00:36:32.210]to the Platte River because I couldn't cross the Missouri
- [00:36:35.210]River.
- [00:36:35.710]The bridge was out.
- [00:36:37.390]So instead of going back and forth over the Missouri River,
- [00:36:40.110]I actually came up.
- [00:36:41.150]And it kind of explored the Platte River.
- [00:36:42.910]One of the best parts of residencies
- [00:36:48.390]is those in-the-moment collaborations.
- [00:36:50.690]There was another artist there who was kind of--
- [00:36:56.090]oh, here.
- [00:36:56.590]These are the reference photos I took
- [00:36:58.130]while I was there of some of the flooding I saw.
- [00:37:01.550]But one of the best parts is random collaborations.
- [00:37:04.510]There was an artist there who was very interested in doing
- [00:37:07.050]a project about barn swallows.
- [00:37:08.350]So he wanted to go and see all the abandoned barns.
- [00:37:10.550]And I wanted to go.
- [00:37:11.090]I wanted to see all the abandoned parks.
- [00:37:16.410]And he had a car with four-wheel drive.
- [00:37:18.350]And I had a car with the air conditioning
- [00:37:19.670]that actually worked.
- [00:37:20.510]So we would collaborate.
- [00:37:22.010]I was like, oh, we're not going anywhere
- [00:37:23.670]that needs four-wheel drive.
- [00:37:24.830]So I would drive.
- [00:37:25.490]And then we were like, oh, we're going
- [00:37:27.370]to go through some washed out roads
- [00:37:29.070]and check out some weird corner of Nebraska.
- [00:37:31.290]So Aaron would drive.
- [00:37:33.590]And it was one of those moments at a residency
- [00:37:37.010]that you cannot plan that make them super unique and awesome.
- [00:37:41.030]So we both got a lot of work done.
- [00:37:43.370]In addition to the flooded landscapes south of Nebraska
- [00:37:49.550]City, many of the prints shared here
- [00:37:51.590]reference multiple museums and parks throughout the state.
- [00:37:54.750]These include the Missouri River Basin Lewis and Clark
- [00:37:57.650]Interpretive Center in Nebraska City, Indian Cave State
- [00:38:00.830]Park in Schubert, Weir Span Lake at Chalco Hills Recreation
- [00:38:05.270]Area, the Bob Carey Pedestrian Bridge in Omaha,
- [00:38:08.250]and Schramm Park State Recreation Area
- [00:38:10.970]in Gretna.
- [00:38:12.130]So these are a lot of places I visited.
- [00:38:14.210]I never quite made it up to Lincoln, though.
- [00:38:16.210]This is my first time in Lincoln.
- [00:38:17.630]I basically drove around Lincoln but never came in.
- [00:38:20.270]Ultimately, my goal for my work is
- [00:38:25.070]to share these layered stories of a specific place,
- [00:38:28.170]both with the people who live there
- [00:38:29.790]and the people outside that place.
- [00:38:32.290]I want to allow a space for mourning disappearing
- [00:38:35.070]landscapes, but also a place to celebrate the water, people,
- [00:38:39.170]plants, and animals that are there now
- [00:38:40.910]now, whether they are wild, recreated, compromised,
- [00:38:44.690]or pristine.
- [00:38:45.830]I want to create a space for conversation
- [00:38:48.650]and how we continue to cherish and support
- [00:38:51.650]the environments that still remain
- [00:38:53.570]through a critical visual exploration of how we got there.
- [00:38:57.230]So that's kind of my Midwest work.
- [00:39:02.670]In here, I have one old project that I'll
- [00:39:06.050]go through pretty quickly because it seemed relevant
- [00:39:08.330]to our current political climate and then kind
- [00:39:10.850]of like some thoughts on my new work.
- [00:39:13.950]So this one's a little just like, well,
- [00:39:16.010]and I'll plop this in at the end of the talk.
- [00:39:17.810]This project is inspired by climate change
- [00:39:24.530]and the political climate of 2018,
- [00:39:28.030]which is unfortunately rather similar to the one
- [00:39:30.590]we are facing now again in 2025.
- [00:39:34.310]As a person obviously concerned with the future of our planet,
- [00:39:38.370]the 2016 administration's treatment of the
- [00:39:40.790]environment caused me constant anxiety and dismay.
- [00:39:44.330]In the summer of 2018, I was awarded a two-week residency
- [00:39:47.450]at Fire Island National Seashore, which
- [00:39:50.550]is a barrier island to Long Island.
- [00:39:53.550]And it's a part of the national park system.
- [00:39:57.750]For those of you embarking out in the world,
- [00:40:00.110]national park residencies are a really awesome place
- [00:40:03.710]to explore and make art.
- [00:40:06.670]The less well-known the park, the easier
- [00:40:09.630]it is to get the residency.
- [00:40:10.730]Acadia, really hard to get.
- [00:40:13.950]Glacier, good luck.
- [00:40:15.870]Fire Island, no one cares.
- [00:40:18.890]That's not true.
- [00:40:19.610]But the less popular they are, the better.
- [00:40:23.690]And state parks often have them as well
- [00:40:26.090]in ecological stations.
- [00:40:27.770]They're good places to start out your residencies.
- [00:40:33.450]So anyways, I was in Fire Island.
- [00:40:35.030]I was really sad.
- [00:40:37.290]I was pretty depressed about the rolling back of--
- [00:40:40.670]and the Environmental Protection Agency, in particular,
- [00:40:43.890]is where I chose to focus my anger and dismay.
- [00:40:49.310]So I was really upset about this rolling back
- [00:40:51.230]of environmental protections in favor of corporations'
- [00:40:54.110]private interests.
- [00:40:56.270]The EPA's job is to regulate what
- [00:40:58.310]is going on in the environment.
- [00:40:59.990]And I mean, ultimately, it's not even that much
- [00:41:02.710]to protect the environment.
- [00:41:03.830]It's to protect us from destroying the environment.
- [00:41:07.590]It's supposed to do both, but many of the rules
- [00:41:10.610]being dismantled were just common sense.
- [00:41:13.130]And every time I read about it in the news,
- [00:41:15.070]I alternated between being infuriated and depressed.
- [00:41:18.350]This is happening again right now.
- [00:41:21.290]So anyways, I decided when I'm at residencies
- [00:41:24.350]and I don't know what to do, I do a daily drawing practice.
- [00:41:27.450]And so I decided I would do my daily drawing practice that
- [00:41:29.890]was focused on drawing pictures and writing notes
- [00:41:33.710]to Scott Pruitt, the director of the EPA.
- [00:41:35.930]Every day, I wrote an illustration
- [00:41:40.550]of what I was doing.
- [00:41:41.930]And so I created this one-of-a-kind poster.
- [00:41:44.210]I sent it out.
- [00:41:45.710]Since all the postcards were mailed away,
- [00:41:48.710]I only had photographic evidence.
- [00:41:50.690]And so I made a zine to document what I said, and what I sent,
- [00:41:56.150]and what I experienced Wildfire Island.
- [00:41:59.690]One of the most-- again, this is another random,
- [00:42:02.930]just happens when you go to a residency.
- [00:42:04.730]One of the most unique aspects was there
- [00:42:08.030]was a team of ocean surveyors from the National
- [00:42:10.490]Geologic Survey in the cabin next door.
- [00:42:12.710]I love those guys.
- [00:42:14.030]I love that agency.
- [00:42:15.830]They just happened to be next door.
- [00:42:17.970]I became friends with them.
- [00:42:19.310]They fed me.
- [00:42:21.350]And then the real thing is, they took me out.
- [00:42:23.270]They didn't take-- they weren't allowed
- [00:42:24.170]to take me out on their boat, because there was
- [00:42:26.090]legal implications for that.
- [00:42:27.830]But they took me out.
- [00:42:28.950]There's no cars on Fire Island.
- [00:42:30.470]You have to take a ferry to get there.
- [00:42:32.250]So I had to walk everywhere.
- [00:42:33.530]But because they were scientists, they had a special--
- [00:42:36.630]they had a car.
- [00:42:37.290]So they took me to far corners of the island I wouldn't have
- [00:42:40.110]been able to--
- [00:42:40.430]so walk to on my own.
- [00:42:43.690]So I got to hang out with them and learn from them for a while.
- [00:42:46.410]And it was a really great experience.
- [00:42:49.490]Scott Pruitt did write back.
- [00:42:52.530]It was a few weeks later.
- [00:42:54.070]This letter is full of bullshit.
- [00:42:55.650]And it panders to big business.
- [00:42:57.290]So it's not that great.
- [00:43:00.310]However, it is dated to the day of his resignation.
- [00:43:04.990]So I like to think it's the last letter he wrote.
- [00:43:10.370]Unfortunately, the guy who replaced him was just as bad.
- [00:43:13.650]And now we have Lee Zeldin, who's probably worse.
- [00:43:16.670]So anyways, I kind of wanted to throw this in,
- [00:43:18.890]not to depress everyone, but to think about this
- [00:43:22.910]may be where something of my practice
- [00:43:26.130]might be returning to or thinking about how I can--
- [00:43:32.030]instead of just bringing people into the museum
- [00:43:34.970]to think about the environment, how
- [00:43:37.790]I can kind of project more outward
- [00:43:40.310]now that the current--
- [00:43:42.410]there's a lot of really tragic things
- [00:43:44.410]going on in the environment that I wish we could stop.
- [00:43:49.290]Recent research.
- [00:43:51.090]I would like to kind of get a little bit more eastward,
- [00:43:54.650]although the Platte River is just calling me still.
- [00:43:57.830]But I want to start a project on the Great Lakes
- [00:44:01.290]in the St. Lawrence Seaway, specifically invasive species
- [00:44:04.670]that come up through the Seaway through big ships,
- [00:44:08.970]big commercial shipping.
- [00:44:10.250]So this was my convoluted trip around Lake Michigan.
- [00:44:16.190]I managed to touch all five Great Lakes in six weeks,
- [00:44:20.370]which I was pretty excited about.
- [00:44:23.130]I had two residencies, one in northern Michigan
- [00:44:26.430]and one down at the bottom at Indiana Dunes,
- [00:44:28.630]the bottom of Lake Michigan.
- [00:44:29.770]Indiana Dunes is another national park residency.
- [00:44:36.670]It's really great.
- [00:44:37.670]It's one of those parks people don't know about again.
- [00:44:40.190]So it's a really good one.
- [00:44:42.490]I hung out with a local hiking group.
- [00:44:44.730]I ran around taking pictures.
- [00:44:46.730]I saw the cranes for the first time.
- [00:44:51.830]I went to facilities and went through their engineering
- [00:44:54.210]files, looked at maps.
- [00:44:55.670]I went to an owl, saw an owl banding.
- [00:45:00.470]I got really interested.
- [00:45:01.670]I saw a lot of the invasive species.
- [00:45:04.190]Again, back at the USGS, hanging out with park rangers.
- [00:45:10.130]This is the USGS, the Great Lakes Science Center,
- [00:45:14.530]which is a really kind of amazing research
- [00:45:18.730]station at Indiana Dunes.
- [00:45:20.650]That's a Tupperware full of invasive zebra mussels
- [00:45:23.350]that they just cryo-- they have giant cryo freezers there.
- [00:45:26.570]So they collect them and freeze them.
- [00:45:30.450]And then there were scientists there
- [00:45:32.410]who were trying to reintroduce native mussels.
- [00:45:34.790]Native mussels are the bigger ones.
- [00:45:37.590]The invasive ones are these smaller ones.
- [00:45:39.550]It's a little hard to tell.
- [00:45:40.070]It's a little hard to tell scale.
- [00:45:41.270]But the scientists who were working on that, I asked them.
- [00:45:45.530]And they gave me a two-hour lecture
- [00:45:47.810]on the history of native mussels in the Great Lakes.
- [00:45:52.870]And so they're trying to rebreed these native mussels
- [00:45:56.310]to reintroduce them into the Calumet River watershed.
- [00:45:59.350]And so I got to learn a lot about that.
- [00:46:02.370]These are the native mussels out in their--
- [00:46:04.830]well, native mussel shells out in their environment.
- [00:46:07.910]It is actually-- in most states, it's illegal
- [00:46:10.010]to pick up native mussels because they're so endangered.
- [00:46:15.150]So don't pick them up.
- [00:46:18.310]And then just wandering around.
- [00:46:19.950]I met someone, and they were like, oh, you
- [00:46:21.910]should go to the tip of the Bitt Watershed Council.
- [00:46:24.110]And they had all these invasive species frozen in resin.
- [00:46:28.970]And so I hung out with some of the educators
- [00:46:31.190]there and talked with them.
- [00:46:34.530]And so I will--
- [00:46:37.050]oh, and then this is my trip back.
- [00:46:39.950]So maps are my thing.
- [00:46:41.930]I want to hit Indiana Dunes again.
- [00:46:43.730]I want to hit the Maumee River and go south around Lake Erie
- [00:46:46.430]this time.
- [00:46:48.110]But this is just kind of to show you this is how I work.
- [00:46:53.150]It starts out just kind of wandering.
- [00:46:55.450]And then it kind of focuses in and becomes the body of work
- [00:46:59.030]you see at the Great Plains.
- [00:47:01.190]And I hope you guys join us for ice cream after the talk.
- [00:47:05.750]But follow me on Instagram, website,
- [00:47:09.890]I just got a newsletter.
- [00:47:11.810]But I don't have it set up automatic.
- [00:47:13.550]But if you send me an email, I'll
- [00:47:15.050]add you to the mailing list.
- [00:47:17.510]And I would love-- if any of you have any questions,
- [00:47:20.630]I'd love to answer them.
- [00:47:22.110]And yeah, thank you for listening.
- [00:47:39.830]I guess not for your current work,
- [00:47:55.070]but do you plan on exploring outside of the country?
- [00:47:58.970]For example, doing works based on the Amazon
- [00:48:01.610]or the Gobi Desert?
- [00:48:06.430]That's a really excellent question.
- [00:48:09.770]I think that with COVID, I did decide that--
- [00:48:13.410]I have been very focused on the United States.
- [00:48:17.170]And I went to, actually, Kathmandu, Nepal,
- [00:48:21.010]for a month-long residency.
- [00:48:22.550]And so I am interested in that as a contrast
- [00:48:27.290]to what's going on in the US.
- [00:48:28.890]And so I do have a few smaller projects about Kathmandu.
- [00:48:33.630]And I see myself continuing to do that.
- [00:48:35.430]I am particularly interested in Patagonia.
- [00:48:39.710]A lot of my work, it's really important
- [00:48:41.570]to do a really sustained investment in a place.
- [00:48:44.930]And that is harder and more expensive to do abroad.
- [00:48:49.190]So I see those projects as just smaller projects that
- [00:48:53.430]are so I can compare what's going on in the US
- [00:48:56.630]a little better.
- [00:48:57.730]Unless I got a Guggenheim or a Fulbright,
- [00:49:00.970]then I would go all in on international.
- [00:49:03.770]But yeah, it's a little too--
- [00:49:08.270]I mean, the Missouri River one took
- [00:49:09.650]like eight years, and I just think
- [00:49:13.490]it's important to really invest that time to understand
- [00:49:19.230]the landscape and the nuances and the stories.
- [00:49:21.770]So that's harder to do abroad.
- [00:49:23.570]That was a really good question.
- [00:49:29.810]Thank you.
- [00:49:30.310]Hi, thank you for your talk.
- [00:49:36.950]I was wondering, you often use the corner.
- [00:49:39.590]In your installations, is that sort
- [00:49:43.870]of an implied perspective because you're
- [00:49:47.830]using flat pattern a lot and not always,
- [00:49:50.610]but so that you have this sense of expansion?
- [00:49:56.050]Yes, exactly.
- [00:49:57.210]I've never quite put it as perspective, but yes.
- [00:50:01.550]And I want to remember that.
- [00:50:03.470]But yes, I like to use a corner for the installations
- [00:50:07.310]so that the viewer can kind of--
- [00:50:09.530]feel engulfed, but then also step away and have that expanse.
- [00:50:14.970]And then also, it's practical.
- [00:50:16.850]Most galleries don't have super long flat walls.
- [00:50:20.850]And so yeah, having it in a corner kind of allows the viewer
- [00:50:25.970]to kind of get immersed in the work.
- [00:50:29.730]But also, I'm definitely playing around with perspective.
- [00:50:32.470]But I never quite thought of it that way.
- [00:50:34.090]I like that.
- [00:50:39.470]Yes, thank you for your lecture.
- [00:50:48.670]I wonder if you think of any other parts of your practice
- [00:50:52.430]besides the postcards to EPA Administrator Scott
- [00:50:56.030]Pruitt as activist.
- [00:50:57.450]I think that most of it has--
- [00:51:09.410]it has a low level of activism because I'm
- [00:51:14.550]asking people to reconsider what they're thinking
- [00:51:19.850]about the landscape.
- [00:51:20.870]And I'm hoping it kind of changes how people think.
- [00:51:24.750]But the more visual stuff is definitely--
- [00:51:28.810]it's like only if you push underneath and think
- [00:51:31.650]about the work or read the label or ask me.
- [00:51:36.470]There's always been a few side projects
- [00:51:39.350]that I go in and do that are a little like the postcards.
- [00:51:43.350]I did kind of a celebrate your place kind of one
- [00:51:47.390]where asking people to celebrate unrecognized landscapes.
- [00:51:52.550]And again, it seems like it pops up
- [00:51:57.050]in times of more political strife.
- [00:51:59.690]So it's not always visible.
- [00:52:02.490]And I think that I'm possibly going
- [00:52:04.590]to have to, in this moment, kind of rethink that moving forward.
- [00:52:09.290]And so pushing that to the surface
- [00:52:12.090]instead of having it be just a very underlying layer.
- [00:52:15.450]Do you see any other parts that I'm missing?
- [00:52:20.990]Well, I can see your lecture.
- [00:52:23.950]Yes.
- [00:52:24.450]Well, I will say, I feel like talking about my work
- [00:52:27.130]is the most activist.
- [00:52:28.730]I love talking about my work.
- [00:52:30.490]And I love talking to the public about my work.
- [00:52:32.330]And I can't always share the super personal, nuanced stories
- [00:52:37.330]about my work with the experts.
- [00:52:39.230]I can't always share the actual work.
- [00:52:41.790]But when someone asks me about a print,
- [00:52:43.830]I can say, oh, that's when this flood happened
- [00:52:47.430]because the government made this decision, and it was bad,
- [00:52:50.430]and it needs to be changed.
- [00:52:51.990]And then they can look at that image and think about that
- [00:52:55.830]and see, oh, maybe that is bad.
- [00:52:58.270]So I do see how I talk about my work as activist.
- [00:53:03.070]But I'm not a performance artist.
- [00:53:07.170]So there's some tension there that I
- [00:53:09.170]haven't figured out how to navigate.
- [00:53:10.830]Hi.
- [00:53:26.990]TINA MARTIN: Hi.
- [00:53:28.610]I wanted to ask you about how
- [00:53:30.730]the realization of coming up with colonization and just
- [00:53:39.110]like, what was that realization for you
- [00:53:43.450]when you came into your research?
- [00:53:44.970]Because I'm assuming it kind of happened later on.
- [00:53:47.630]And so I'm just curious about that realization for you.
- [00:53:52.150]TINA MARTIN: It was several things for me.
- [00:53:55.170]And there were moments I was really
- [00:53:58.930]into thinking about places that were named in the past.
- [00:54:04.710]And so I was working with indigenous names.
- [00:54:07.190]And there was a moment when I had to step
- [00:54:09.050]back from that and think about whether I
- [00:54:11.270]should be doing that.
- [00:54:12.310]And I was like, if I am, I need to step back
- [00:54:17.610]and do more research.
- [00:54:18.830]I can't just find a list of names and just name them
- [00:54:21.930]and not understand what's going on
- [00:54:24.110]and who these people represent.
- [00:54:25.850]And then another thing, right around this time I started,
- [00:54:31.490]this body of work is also when I started
- [00:54:33.750]teaching pretty intensively.
- [00:54:35.870]And there was a lot of learning that went on alongside
- [00:54:38.990]my students.
- [00:54:39.990]And so they were figuring things out
- [00:54:41.770]and they were challenging me in the classroom.
- [00:54:44.990]And I think that through teaching them,
- [00:54:47.230]critiquing their work, seeing moments
- [00:54:50.270]where they could improve, and then seeing ways
- [00:54:53.070]that I could improve and think about things a little more,
- [00:54:56.450]thinking about colonization a little bit more critically,
- [00:54:59.370]that was definitely, I think, I grew along as I teach.
- [00:55:04.550]I worked with my students and other faculty, and it was really
- [00:55:08.930]a community, I think for me, it was those various communities
- [00:55:11.990]that helped me.
- [00:55:14.470]Thank you for that question.
- [00:55:15.630]Thank you so much.
- [00:55:25.810]Thank you.
- [00:55:27.550]Thank you.
- [00:55:28.650]Thank you.
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