Wild About Prairie Birds and Gallery Talk

Tonight’s special event at the Phipps Center for the Arts was part of What We Need is Here, a year-long project encouraging sustainable communities. Before the Gallery Talk, Harvey Halvorsen of the DNR presented a talk about prairies and prairie birds. Prairie and oak savannah lands in the St. Croix county area have diminished over the years. This has lead to a corresponding decrease in prairie birds. Groups are working to maintain and expand prairie lands in the area. Funding is a challenge as the public tends to fund higher profile forest projects.

My project, Whispering Wall, lead me to a controversy that included prairies. I intended the sculpture to be a reminder to listen carefully to nature. Instead, I discovered that who you listen to matters. When planning the piece, I asked park personnel about any issues in the park. No one mentioned any. I proposed this piece and started to collect buckthorn branches and pile them near the site. On the second weekend in September, I returned to start construction and found stakes adorned with pink tape flags at my site. Spotting an engineer with metal stakes, I learned about the plan for a road and a new campground in this area of the park. After much debate and thought, I moved my piece off to the side, trying to keep it in the prairie-like area, but away from pink flags and future asphalt. As I constructed the wall, several residents walked through and told me about the special nature of the proposed campground area. They complained that the project would decimate an indigenous prairie and some wetlands. On October 5, the Hudson Star-Observer reported that the campground project was delayed. A new study could be completed by the end of November.

Jim Proctor, one of the other artists in the exhibit, and I talked with Harvey Halvorsen who was not aware of an indigenous prairie in the park. Shown the site on the map, he realized that he had never investigated this particular area. In the pictures of my piece, there was no evidence of prairie. The residents, however, pointed to an area beyond my piece. I am sure that Harvey will be checking out this area soon.