Year: 2019-2022
Dimensions: 30’ x 54’ x 30’
Medium/ Technique: Chiffon, Netting, Digital Print
**Produced with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council
Ode to a Prairie shifts the perspective of a traditional prairie landscape, inviting viewers to walk underneath—rather than through—a floating field of indigenous Wisconsin plants. This large-scale installation for the Chazen Museum of Art’s Paige Court explores plants as markers of memory and place, referencing species including goldenrod and milkweed while engaging with the recent movement to restore Wisconsin’s prairie environment, which was almost completely destroyed by decades of farming. The work transforms the 1,713 square foot central atrium through approximately 50-75 large silk prints measuring 5-10 feet wide by 15-45 feet long. Individual embroideries based on pressed flower specimens from the Wisconsin State Herbarium are sewn at specimen size, scanned at high resolution, and printed on transparent silk or sheer polyester fabric. I then cut and stitch into these prints to add space and air, disrupting the surface and creating organic edges while adding metallics, additional embroidery, and appliquéd chiffon for texture.
The installation creates a lace-like environment that contrasts dramatically with the heavy marble brutalist interior, bringing textile forms that burst forth and overtake the ordered architectural space. Source material from the herbarium is altered, cropped, repeated, and mutated to reference repeat patterns found in fabrics, lace, and wallpaper—expanding embroideries from 10-inch units to monumental 10-foot scale to address the site’s grandeur. Each piece hangs from a single point, allowing the work to spin and sway, creating changing compositions as air currents move through the court. These specimens, now gigantic, create a preternatural transformation where the space sprouts plant matter made of thread. Built with deliberate oppositions in mind, Ode to a Prairie contrasts intricate detail and transparency with large solid spaces, lightness with the weight of architecture, and the organic with the built environment—materializing a dream-like floating garden that invites contemplation of what has been lost and what might be restored.
This work has been included in the following exhibitions:
Exhibition: Suspended Landscapes at the Chazen Museum of Art
Exhibition: Of Wonders Wild and New at The Burlington Botanical Gardens (links to be added)
