Creating With/For Water
Little Falls High School art club making paper (photo by Karen Warner)
Artist
Su Legatt
Collaborating Organization:
Time Frame:
June 2022 to December 2022
Location:
Little Falls, MN
Project Description:
This unique artist in residency program partners a community engagement artist with a small town in rural Minnesota that has a vulnerable drinking water source. For Little Falls, their ground water is their drinking or source water and all the wells are clustered together on the edge of town. The protection of this source water is a top priority for the local government.
The Source Water Protection Collaborative, convened by Environmental Initiative, is partnering artists with local government to raise awareness within the community in a productive, fun, non-intimidating way. Funding for the effort is provided by the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment. From June to December, 2023, Su worked closely with local community leaders, educators, artists, and more to develop pieces that explore the communities relationship to water, their understanding of its effects, and how important it is to the community at large.
Starting with paper making events, participants were invited to put their hands into the vulnerable water at the center of our project. With minimal instruction, guests were invited to reach into a large tub of water and pulp and pull out a screen to create a sheet of paper. These sheets were used at later events, along with natural dyes from local plants, to create a series of painting that captured their relationship with nature and water.
Additionally, story-telling and poetry events were hosted to draw out more stories and community experiences. All of the contributed materials were digitized and layered together to create a series of prints inspired by broadsides. The broadsides, while designed by Su Legatt, were created using contributions from a variety of community members over the course of several community events.
Community came together in the end to not only see the final pieces but meet their secret collaborators. Each participant was given a reproduction of their piece and celebrated for their contribution. Additional prints are sold at the local art gallery and online. All proceeds from the sale of these pieces will go to the Friends of Crane Meadows, who work to protect the natural elements at the Crane Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.
Goals or Outcomes Achieved:
Creatively educate the local community of the issues surrounding their water sources
Collect and share stories about personal relationships with water and nature
Connect community members with each other through creative, collaborative techniques
Creatively share important municipal plans and concerns with residents in a nonpolitical atmosphere
What did you learn? Artistically? Administratively? About the community?
I already knew the challenges this project's tight timeline would create and try to design the project to be flexible yet still impactful. Public events intended to draw people in had to evoke a curiosity, more private events were designed to focus on the abilities of those already gathered. Since there wasn't time to create a collaborative community, participants were made aware of the project's structure early on and signed an image use agreement. After their pieces were digitized, the originals were returned. It was only after the final pieces were created that they learned if their work had been selected.
For me, it was important that each participant felt honored for their contribution. Too often, community engagement projects use the community as a workforce for the creation of the work without allowing for authorship of the project. In my experience, the ability to offer the community ownership in a public art project is what leads to stewardship and sustainability.
Links
https://www.sulegatt.com/creating-with-for-water-1
Quote from the project:
"This unique artist in residency program partners a community engagement artist with a small town in rural Minnesota that has a vulnerable drinking water source.” — Su Legatt
Photo Credit: Local writers work with Laura Hansen to create poetry about nature and water (photo by Su Legatt)
Photo credit: Collaborative Broadside by Liam Day, Ben Tscnida, and Hannah Nutz (Designed by Su Legatt)
Photo credit: Collaborative Broadside by Dorothy Bachan and Wyatt Bruns (Designed by Su Legatt)
Photo credit: Collaborative Broadside by Charmaine Pappas Donovan and Ellyn Chapin (Designed by Su Legatt)
