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Conversing with Forest, Air, and Light || Art Exhibition

DATES

Sep 30 – Oct 30, 2022

Art Reception: Fri, Oct 21, 2022

During Downtown Art Crawl, Fri, Oct 21st from 4 – 5PM. Light refreshments provided.

LOCATION

Historic Lobby, Main Level

Mon – Fri || 10am – 5pm

Sat || 10am – 2pm

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Always Free to Attend. Always Inspiring.
If you would like to purchase a particular piece from the Art Exhibit, please contact the Box Office or Gallery Gift Shop.


EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION

Lindsy Halleckson’s paintings live at the intersection of art, philosophy, and science. As an artist working in the tradition of minimalism, her work evokes multi-sensory experiences heightened in solitude, creating spaces that are quiet but also rich with emotion and memory. She grew up in a small town at the edges of the suburbs of the Twin Cities. Experiencing the vanishing wild pockets of land around her home shaped her desire to explore landscape that is both familiar and foreign, while using an artistic voice to investigate the innate need to be outside. She asks questions about how our human bodies relate to the global ecological systems that surround us and support our existence.

“As a whole, my work explores barriers, patterns, and tension between infinity and closed space. I use the gradient as a beacon of optimism. A reminder of infinity. A refusal of the binary. Although my paintings are not specific representations of place, they reference sky and weather. Our connection extends beyond a slowly thinning veil of atmosphere and the air that has been recycled through our ancestors to us. The works invite the viewer to look beyond the bounds, questioning our own limitations and capacity as the works themselves push beyond their own containers of space and light. Even in spaces that seem vast and void we can seek to gain understanding—we find their value, and we find that they are changing along with us.” – Lindsy Halleckson

Headlines of climate change now permeate news cycles across the globe, often paired with shocking images of wildfires, floods, and melting glaciers. Perhaps these visuals are effective at conveying the dire situation of ecological systems, but they portray tangible areas of the land around us that can be studied visually. When it comes to the atmospheric aspects of environmental change, images are often limited to aerosols, namely smog over cities or haze extending from wildfires. However, the atmosphere is both a cause and an effect of climate change, and the chemistry behind these roles is visually imperceptible. While scientists may be able to convey their findings in words, images are emotionally compelling and are even able to invoke past experiences – thus creating new ways of relating with and understanding the natural world around us. Art makes the invisibility of atmospheric chemistry visible.

Over the past two years, Halleckson has been embedded within a scientific research team as they study forest interactions with the atmosphere. Researchers from the University of Minnesota, Colorado State University, and Indiana University gathered measurements during a research field campaign at the Manitou Experimental Forest in Colorado in August – September 2021. These researchers aimed to study the exchange between coniferous forest and global atmospheric chemistry.

Creating a body of artwork in tandem with this research project has provided a prompt for experiencing their own investigations through a new perspective and is helping to bring their findings to the public beyond the academic community.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Lindsy Halleckson’s work crosses fields of art, science, and environmentalism. Her paintings and installations have been shown in galleries across the U.S. and beyond, including Woman Made Gallery (Chicago), Harwood Art Center (Albuquerque), DeVos Art Museum (Marquette, MI), and Barnard Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa). As an invited artistic collaborator, she has been embedded within scientific research teams, conducting atmospheric research funded by the National Science Foundation (2019-22) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (2022-24). She has been awarded grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2018, 2021), Metropolitan Regional Arts Council/McKnight Foundation (2017) and Puffin Foundation (2013). She has received residencies in The Arctic Circle (2018), at Hinge Arts at The Kirkbride (2016), as a Jerome-funded Emerging Artist Fellow at Tofte Lake Center (2011) and at the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center (2010). She was an Art(ists) on the Verge 10 Fellow, and her work is represented by Wally Workman Gallery in Austin, TX.

Website || Instagram || #LindsyHalleckson

Email: lhalleckson@gmail.com


This exhibition would not have been possible without funding and support from the National Science Foundation. Thanks to the Millet and Farmer research groups for enabling this project.