When Hippies Conspire: Artist + Conservationist Collaborations
En route to talk art at the ISU Extension Natural Resources Professional Development Day, I drove through Jewell, Iowa, and nearly veered off the road when I caught sight of this beauty. AND I got to meet the mother/daughter artist team, Sandy Teig and Mandy Tieg Grotewold. Talk about art + natural resources!
A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to publicly talk shop about intersections of art and conservation in Iowa with two ISU Extension and Outreach colleagues: Catherine DeLong, program manager, Water Quality, and Adam Janke, assistant professor and extension wildlife specialist. I was thrilled to get their email inviting me to collaborate on a cool art + conservation program for the Natural Resources Professional Development Day at Briggs Woods County Park (I remember obnoxiously including lots of exclamation points in my reply).
As a once avid hiker, I’m embarrassed to say that I’d never really considered the parallels between natural resource conservation and art until meeting Adam and Catherine.
But case in point.
Here are three commonalities between the worlds of art and the outdoors.
We sometimes get a bad rap. If I had a nickel for every time a casual introduction led to some version of “You’re an artist? I can’t even draw a stick figure”….as if art = realistic drawing. In the same vein, conservationists often get “oh, I don’t *do* outdoors. I’m not outdoorsy.” As if being outsides requires a person to be the next contestant on Naked and Afraid.
All jokes aside, both art and conservation reflect what we value. As creatives, we create or recreate something of value, whether to revere, to challenge, to make visible. In the world of natural resources, we conserve and protect what we value.
Art can be a strategy to bring folks together for common good, just like conservation. (See examples below)
Art and conservation can be seen as peripheral, something people do as a hobby, but they can both be drivers of community and economic development and are crucial to quality of life in communities. Remember the WPA and the PWAP? Both programs invested heavily in public works of art and public parks and conservation efforts. Many of these remain assets to the rural communities that house them.
In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps as an antidote to the millions of young men unemployed from the decrease in farming jobs and later from the Great Depression. Men earned $30/week, were provided 3 meals a day, and were housed in camps across the country to work on government land and government-only projects, so as not to interfere with the private sector.
Many of us can see the legacy and feel the impacts of this program today in our own communities. Much of Iowa's Pine Lake State Park, including the second lake, cabins, shelters, was built by 250 Civilian Conservation Corps workers from 1933 to 1943. A CCC camp was located near the park in Eldora, Iowa.
The painting here was inspired by several old photographs of CCC workers at Pine Lake. On their off days, the men would travel to town to watch movies or play music.
CCC labor transformed this park, and parks across Iowa and the nation. Millions of acres of land preserved, and the beloved Appalachian Trail improved and completed. Annual park visitors tripled from 1 to 3 million a year, mainly due to increased access roads and more amenities built by the men, such as picnic shelters, docks, and cabins. The legacy of this program is in every corner of the US, and is often unnoticed by us, as it’s become such a part of our cultural landscape.
This piece was part of the 20 Artists, 20 Parks project in 2019-20.
While working for ISU Extension & Outreach for the past several years, I’ve noticed that local initiatives tend to pack more punch when folks across sectors collaborate. Artists and conservationists have been doing this work for years in the Midwest with some pretty spectacular impacts.
20 Artists, 20 Parks:
A partnership between the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Iowa Arts Council to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Iowa state parks, the 20 Artists, 20 Parks programs placed 20 Iowa artists in 20 parks around the state. Each artist created at least one artwork based on their experiences in the park as well as plan interactive programming with park staff. The artwork was shown in a traveling exhibition around the state in 2020. Hampered a bit by the pandemic, but amazing nonetheless.
Paddling Theatre
In 2013, Ashley Hanson and Andrew Gaylord, community theatre-maker powerhouses of PlaceBase Productions, partnered the good people of Granite Falls, Minnesota and the Minnesota DNR to produce a paddling theatre production.
In their words, “On May 18th 2013 as a part of the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Minnesota Waterways, and in collaboration with the Clean Up the River Environment, The Minnesota DNR and Wilderness Inquiry, PlaceBase Productions staged a live-action radio drama on an 8-mile stretch of the Minnesota River reaching from Granite Falls to the Upper Sioux Agency State Park. From their canoes, the audience engaged in stories, songs and characters from local river lore, presented both as live theatre and radio drama.”
The community reception of this event was overwhelming Folks from over 70 Minnesota counties attended this event and over 50% of those attendees had never been on the river. Goes to show what can happen when two seemingly different groups collaborate on something creative and unusual.
The Legacy Amendment
Perhaps the most far-reaching and impactful collaboration because art and natural resources is Minnesota’s Legacy Amendment. In 2008, Minnesotans voted to increase their sales tax by 3/8 of one percent until 2034. The Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment aims to protect “drinking water sources; to protect, enhance, and restore wetlands, prairies, forests, and fish, game, and wildlife habitat; to preserve arts and cultural heritage; to support parks and trails; and to protect, enhance, and restore lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater.”
The increased revenue is divided into four funds: clean water fund, parks and trails fund, outdoor heritage fund, and an arts and culture fund.
To put this in perspective, the arts and culture fund alone will generate over $1.2 billion for creativity in Minnesota communities for the duration of the Amendment. Minnesota is by far the most supportive state in the nation of artists and makers.
The Crochet Coral Reef is a project by Australian-born twin-sisters Margaret Wertheim and Christine Wertheim. These intricate coral reef figures were crocheted by community members as a way to highlight and process the destruction of the Australian coral reef. Photo credit: https://www.margaretwertheim.com