ARTIST STATEMENT

Refugia

Kristen Anderson

with Susan Hawkinson and Loree Miltich

Ecosystems that retain a variety of organisms and resilience amid changing conditions are referred to as "refugia". Like the ecosystems of the natural world, when the human mind experiences cognitive decline, disease, or injury, pockets of rich memory may remain amid surrounding areas that have been damaged or altered. In northern Minnesota, our refugia are wetlands--especially seasonal ponds.

The life teeming in seasonal ponds throughout a forest serve a critical role as "kidneys of the forests." Like a mind that is experiencing the roadblocks of disease, seasonal ponds are at great risk due to development and changing conditions.

As artists creating the Refugia project, we've sought to find a path forward to cope with the challenges in changing environments, both personally and ecologically. It is about learning to connect as caregivers to a special ecosystem in need and to loved ones with changing needs. The connection begins with witness, grows with listening and learning, and with love, is sustained by relationship. Refugia is about honoring what remains.

About the Artists

Kristen Anderson is a visual artist working in felt at her Bigfork, MN studio. With a background in biology and art, she approaches her work with an ecological lens and often creates felt to represent her studies. She partners with the scientific community to develop work, which has even included processing (rolling) large-scale felts together. She enjoys infusing her enthusiasm for the natural world and feltmaking through classes and individual or group shows, primarily in northern Minnesota. More information about Kristen’s work can be found at her website: www.cardamomstudio.org

Loree Miltich and Susan Hawkinson have also collaborated with visual artists Jackie Solem, Gendron Jenson, and Elizabeth Blair. Responding to an artist’s visual creations and in dialogue with the artist and each other, their double-voice poems hold meaning when their own poem is read vertically as well as horizontally, when reading the lines of their poems across the page. Their work has been included as part of Solem and Blair’s exhibits at MacRostie Art Center, The Edge Center for the Arts, Artistry in Bloomington, MN, and Tettegouche State Park as well as published as part of Jenson’s retrospective catalog.