UW NEW SOUTH CAMPUS UNION
In a suite of four large scale integrated works, we explored the loss of American prairie and UW Madison's pioneering role in environmental conservation, including their first studies of extinction (Passenger Pigeon) and the world's first restoration of prairie. I coordinated with the firm Workshop Architects to integrate art into the New South Campus Union. I developed ways for students to be successfully involved over the entire term of the project. Over fifty students and staff participated in brainstorming sessions, follow up discussions, assessment of ideas and outcomes plus a student preview/ critique of my initial concepts. We carefully weighed issues of longevity in ideas, materials, technology and maintenance. This process yielded a team of committed participants who substantially formed the works: Emily Belknap, Ted Lott, Arnold Martin, Amanda Schmitt, Amelia Toelke, Sara Woldt (project manager), Logan Woods and more as well as UW staff/faculty: Paul Broadhead, Dan Cornelius, Susan Dibbell, Gwen Drury, Julie Grove, Jay Martin , Peter Flanary (Foundry) and Robin Scmoldt (Gallery Director). Working closely with Workshop Architects and my studio manager, Colin Dickson, we planned the four works plus a student project to be incorporated fully during construction.
PRAIRIE PASSAGES etched glass 20'h x 40'w x 10'd main entryway 2012
Outside the building, this part of campus is generally defoliated and a thorough hardscape. Students enter the Union though an immersive "ghost" prairie, a passage from the past.
PRAIRIE FIRE(place) bronze screen 3' h x 30'w wrap-around fireplace penninsula 2012
The fireplace depicts significant plants through four seasons while presenting an endlessly burning prairie fire. Peter Flanary and his team of student technicians cast the bronze work in the UW Art Department Foundry.
WISCONSIN PRAIRIE
.8 miles from the main campus is the UW Arboretum and Curtis Prairie, the first restored patch of prairie in the world. We came and returned to Curtis Prairie forty-two times to record the passage of the seasons. We learned that the prairies as we know them today are reconstructions, fictions that require conscientious maintenance. Jake Fuller, camera
A flip-book condensed from WISCONSIN PRAIRIE, December 2009 - May 2011, a three hour looped video recording the passage of seasons on the nation’s oldest restored prairie, UW Arboretum