Weekly Feed: Collaboration, Ecology, Digital Media and Food for Thought

Photograph of the Fennimore Art Museum

By Rachel Beth Rudi, Digital Contributor

• "Rural art museums face distinct challenges when it comes to building audiences for exhibitions and programs," writes Paul D’Ambrosio, president of the New York State Historical Association. “Unlike our counterparts located in urban areas or population centers, rural art museums must compel their audience to travel a good distance to partake of their offerings, and they must tailor their exhibitions and programs to the particular patterns favored by those travelers. At the same time, they must do so while building a donor and sponsorship base that is likewise not local or at least only seasonal.” The Fenimore Art Museum of rural Cooperstown, NY, found a solution through regional collaboration and interdisciplinary thinking. 

Photograph from the Aldo Leopold Foundation Archives

• “Rising before daylight and perched on a bench at his Sauk County shack in Depression-era Wisconsin, [Aldo] Leopold routinely took notes on the dawn chorus of birds. Beginning with the first pre-dawn calls of the indigo bunting or robin, Leopold would jot down in tidy script the bird songs he heard, when he heard them, and details such as the light level when they first sang. He also mapped the territories of the birds near his shack, so he knew where the songs originated.” 

Using these astounding records, two University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have managed to recreate the sounds that surrounded Leopold seventy years ago, compiling the various calls and sounds described and compressing them into one five-minute audio track. Listen here.

Folks may also be interested in perusing this 2011 program anchored at Arizona State University: Rethinking the Land Ethic: Sustainability and the Humanities. 


The Migrating Mural by Jane Kim from Jane Kim on Vimeo.

Artist and science illustrator Jane Kim is on a mission to educate travelers and everyday commuters about the wildlife around them. Following the routes of America’s endangered migratory animals, Kim pulls off the highway to transform the sides of old barns and houses into murals of the animals who seasonally pass by. View Kim’s Kickstarter video here.

New York Times; Kiersten Essenpreis

• "We’re Here, We’re Queer, Y’all" is a must-read New York Times editorial addressing regional stereotypes. Professor Karen Cox also edits the Pop South site and tweets at @SassyProf.

• Standing Bear’s Footsteps crafts workshops and classes for the youth of the Ponca Tribe in Nebraska and Oklahoma. Available on the project’s website is a collection of brief interviews conducted and filmed by Southern Ponca students in a digital media course. In this clip, "Mikhael Laravie, a 7th grade participant in Standing Bear's Footsteps Youth Media Camp, interviews his grandmother Lola Laravie asking about her childhood growing up on a farm in Nebraska."

Readings: A New Definition Of Landscape

Grain Elevator from Measure of Happiness; Frank Gohlke

We offer this Readings selection from John Brinckerhoff Jackson's seminal text Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. The New York Times called Jackson "America’s greatest living writer on the forces that have shaped the land this nation occupies." His work has influenced generations of artists, designers, and writers.

••••••••••

As far back as we can trace the word, land meant a defined space, one with boundaries, though not necessarily one with fences or walls. The word has so many derivative meanings that it rivals in ambiguity the word landscape. Three centuries ago it was still being used in everyday speech to signify an expanse of village holdings, as in grassland or woodland, and then finally to signify England itself--the largest space any Englishman of those days could imagine; in short, a remarkably versatile word, but always implying a space defined by people, and one that could be described in legal terms.

This brings us to that second syllable: scape. It is esentially the same as shape, except that it once meant a composition of similar objects, as when we speak of a fellowship or a membership. The meaning is clearer in a related word: sheaf--a bundle or collection of similar stalks or plants. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, seems to have contained several compound words using the second syllable--scape or its equivalent--to indicate collective aspects of the environment. It is as much as if the words had been coined when people began to see the complexities of the man-made world. Thus housescape meant what we would now call a household, and a word of the same sort which we still use--township--once meant a collection of "tuns" or farmsteads.

From this piece of information we can learn...that the word scape could also indicate something like an organization or a system. And why not? If housescape meant the organization of the personnel of a house, if township eventually came to mean an administrative unit, then landscape could well have meant something like an organization, a system of rural farm spaces. At all events it is clear that a thousand years ago the word had nothing to do with scenery of the depiction of scenery.

Landscape; Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1897

We pull up the word landscape by its Indo-European roots in an attempt to gain some insight into its basic meaning, and at first glance the results seem disappointing. Aside from the fact that as originally used the word dealt only with a small fraction of the rural environment, it seems to contain not a hint of the esthetic and emotional associations which the word still has for us. Little is to be gained by searching for some etymological link between our own rich landscape and the small cluster of plowed fields of more than a thousand years ago.

Nevertheless the formula landscape as a composition of man-made spaces on the land is more significant than it first appears, for if it does not provide us with a definition it throws a revealing light on the origin of the concept. For it says that a landscape is not a natural feature of the environment but a synthetic space, a man-made system of spaces superimposed on the face of the land, functioning and evolving not according to natural laws but to serve a community--for the collective character of the landscape is one thing that all generations and all points of view have agreed upon. A landscape is thus a space deliberately created to speed up or slow down the process of nature. As Mircea Eliade expresses it, it represents man taking upon himself the role of time. 

Open Space; M12 art collective

In the contemporary world it is by recognizing this similarity of purpose [between civil engineering and landscape architecture] that we will eventually formulate a new definition of landscape: a composition of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve as infrastructure or background for our collective existence; and if background seems inappropriately modest we should remember that in our modern use of the word it means that which underscores not only our identity and presence, but also our history.

The Rural America Contemporary Artists: Making Nowhere into Somewhere, Making A Statement

from the Recalcitrant Mimesis installation at the David B. Smith Gallery, Denver; Liz Miller

[Today we are excited to present Brian Frink's curator's statement to the Rural America Contemporary Art show alongside work from the artists included in this exhibit. Please visit the RACA Facebook group for more information, as well as the artist's sites, where larger, high-resolution images are available for viewing.]

Rural America Contemporary Art (RACA) started as a Facebook group.  The idea was to create a forum, a virtual place, where rural artists could connect, share work and promote their various activities.  The name of the group implies a certain irony.  The words “contemporary” and “rural” are not always seen as equivalent concepts.  For a long time progressive ideas moved from urban areas to rural areas.  In early and mid-twentieth century America the term “regionalism” was applied to artists that did not live in urban centers such as New York City.  For many artists the term was a disparaging label.   It usually meant, “behind the times.” 

Archival Structure Five installation, 4Real4Faux exhibit, Truman State University; David Hamlow

Population density in urban areas contributed to this.  More people living in close proximity promoted a rapid exchange of ideas, attitudes, styles and fashions.  The result was innovation based on the mutations these exchanges fostered.  Rural areas are less dense having less frequent random interactions.  So the classic model of innovation in visual art is, progressive ideas form in urban centers of culture then migrate out to rural communities.

Corpus Corvus Corrallary, cast iron, scale model accessories, scenery and pigment; Karl Unnasch

More recently economics, population growth and the advancement of university art education have brought many serious artists to live in rural communities.  The cost of setting up a studio in urban areas has become prohibitive.  The numbers of individuals who define themselves as artists has exploded.  University art departments are now prevalent in even the smallest rural community across America.  These factors have contributed to the incredible growth of rural contemporary art.

Blazer, pencil on paper, 22" x 30"; Brian Frink

Yet, culturally speaking, we still function under the old notion that progressive innovation comes from urban areas migrating outward to rural communities. 

I believe the web and social media has changed this dynamic. 

furnace (first painting of the year), acrylic on panel, 36"  x 24"; Benjamin Gardner

I would like to propose that social media platforms like Facebook allows for a level of interaction and cross-pollination of ideas that might be similar to living in an urban environment.   Trends or theories that in previous generations would have taken years to migrate are now accessed instantly.  For an artist living in relative isolation, there is power in this new dynamic. 

prelude to a claptrap/prussian field, oil on birch, 61" x 97"; Andrew Nordin

These contributing factors may be creating a new paradigm.  A new paradigm where the previous model no longer applies.  Progressive, contemporary ideas, trends and fashions can now move from rural to urban areas.  Artists can live in rural areas and still be progressive and innovative.

    

Seeking Shelter lightbox 23" x 33"; Erik Waterkotte

RACA’s slogan is “Making nowhere into somewhere.”  Of course this motto is also a wry commentary on the fact that those who live in rural America already know it is “somewhere.” So part of the RACA mission is to connect, highlight and validate the immense community of artists that has always sought the solace, inspiration and beauty of rural America.  It is also RACA’s mission to assert that the art made by rural artists is relevant.

held within what hung open and made to lie without escape installation; Gregory Euclide

This first exhibition, curated by the Institute for Rural America Contemporary Art, exemplifies what is going on in our tiny corner of rural America.  The artists collected here are not just creating work that echoes what they see in New York or Los Angeles.  These artists struggle to make highly original and innovative work.  They view themselves as equal voices with their urban peers.  Cognizant and dynamic, their work speculates on the paradoxical nature of life in twenty-first century America.  These artists are Rural America Contemporary Art.   

Brian Frink
Institute for Rural America Contemporary Art

Horizon/Marks #2, mixed media on paper; Lisa Bergh

In Brief: Regional Relationships

Two aspects of A Map Without Boundaries; Regional Relationships

Today we will introduce some work that we will be covering in greater detail soon: the Regional Relationships project. We're focused on bringing rural-urban and rural-international considerations to light, and it's very exciting to encounter these artists making multimedia art from such exchanges. 

A Map Without Boundaries, RR's first project, is a mail art installation by Matthew Friday that considers the cultural, environmental, and even aesthetic effects of the networks of abandoned mines in southeastern Ohio - and his project asks for RR's audience to become participants in the creation of a larger exhibit. RR's current project is Greetings From The Cornbelts by Claire Pentecost; the Chicago-based artist is connecting corn production in the fields of northern Illinois and with those of Mexico. Her field work in Mexico will be presented in postcards, posters, and written documentation.

Please follow the links to learn more, and to discover how this work can find its way to your doorstep: Here's their introductory notes:

What: Regional Relationships commissions artists, scholars, writers and activists to create works that investigate the natural, industrial and cultural landscapes of a region.
It is a platform to re-imagine the spaces and cultural histories around us. An invitation to join in seeing what we can learn—and learning what we can see—by juxtaposing spaces and narratives that are usually kept apart.
 

Why: Popular beliefs about human geography are composed of binary oppositions like “urban” and “rural” and “cosmopolitan” and “provincial”. These divisions naturalize synthetic borders and harden political boundaries, obsfucating their cultural function. 
Applying a regional lens encourages us to think more expansively about the disparate geographies that might exist within the space of one small town or across continents and oceans.

How: Published works will be sent to subscribing individuals and institutions on a semiannual basis.

These Regional Relationships projects contribute so much to the new kinds of dialogue that we can cultivate about rural and urban linkages, and about how rural places find connections of culture, economy, and practice with other places far removed from their local fields. This site is highly recommended, and we'll be expanding in greater detail on their work soon.