20 Artists Explore 20 State Parks
When artists venture outdoors for inspiration, they often find something quiet and peaceful — a sunrise, maybe, or a flower in full bloom.
But Nancy Thompson found the “wild” in wilderness during a trip this summer to southeast Iowa’s Lacey-Keosauqua State Park.
“We hear this BANG!” she recalled. “I didn’t know what it was, but a moment later we saw hail falling all over the place, almost the size of tennis balls.”
Thompson was one of 20 artists who teach at Iowa State University and spent the summer making art — and braving the elements — in 20 state parks to celebrate the parks’ centennial in 2020. Their artwork will travel statewide next year in an exhibition called “20 Artists, 20 Parks,” presented by Iowa State, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs.
“Iowans have found beauty in the state parks for a century now, ever since Backbone State Park opened in 1920 near Strawberry Point,” said Todd Coffelt, the DNR’s state parks bureau chief. “So we organized the ‘20 Artists, 20 Parks’ project to celebrate that legacy.”
The work the artists are making is as varied as the parks themselves, from the Maquoketa Caves to Stephens State Forest near Chariton to the sandy shores of Lake Okoboji at Gull Point State Park. There are more than 70 state parks and forests in all.
Thompson painted the sky after the storm — “with incredible clouds, all pink and orange,” she said — and drew one of the old stone bridges the Civilian Conservation Corps built in the 1930s.
Deb Pappenheimer is stitching together hand-dyed fabric collage of a dozen birds she spotted at Walnut Woods State Park in West Des Moines.
Rob Wallace is carving a vessel in the middle of a rugged chunk of walnut, like the kind that surround Lake Darling, north of Fairfield. (He used his own wood since it’s illegal to harvest from the parks.)
“There’s a piece of beauty within the log itself,” said the woodworker, who hauled his lathe to the park for public demonstrations. After next year’s exhibition, he plans to give his sculpture to the Friends of Lake Darling to display in the lodge.
Olivia Valentine is assembling photos into multimedia works that explore the edges of Viking Lake State Park near Stanton — the edges of the lake itself, but also the edges between the woods and surrounding farmland, the edges between night and day.
Her husband, Firat Erdim, flew kites above Lake Macbride, near North Liberty. He hooked the kite strings to musical instruments, including a hurdy-gurdy, and recorded the sounds to create a “kite choir” that picks up atmospheric vibrations.
“Every place sounds a bit different,” the artist said, who did a similar project in Iceland earlier in the summer. “The contrast was extreme. The static electricity that’s here in Iowa, with the thunderstorms and so on, that just didn’t happen in Iceland.”
All of those sounds and sights from the state parks will be on display next year at the Sioux City Art Center (spring), Dubuque Museum of Art (summer), Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum (fall) and Design on Main (winter). Additionally, each artist will return to his or her park to share a public program about they learned during the artist-in-residence program.
“The artists have produced a variety of work that showcases the unique ecosystems of Iowa’s state parks,” said Veronica O’Hern, the artist programs manager for the Iowa Arts Council. “This project has been a great way to promote environmental stewardship through the arts and highlight two assets that make Iowa such a great place to live: its artists and its natural resources.”
— Michael Morain, Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs
