SAUK COUNTY – It was a special occasion for social estrangation: a guided path of more than 50 miles across the picturesque farmland of Sauk County, marked on a map with poetry, wisdom and explanations about agriculture and transitority art installations.
The “Farm / Art DTour” was part of the Wormfarm Institute’s “Fermentation Fest” which ran from September 26 to October 4. Due to Covid-19, all face-to-face courses that took place as a component of the occasion were other portions of the occasion that required close contact.
But the eighth annual “agricultural/cultural” tour went as planned. It was a loose journey beyond the beautiful farms and rolling farmland of Sauk County for those who wanted to venture abroad. It was an opportunity to explore giant art installations on farmland, created through artists from all over the country. Organizers said this year’s art tour referred to a new itinerary, marked by works of art “adapted to the site. “
Hundreds of cars were on the road during the last day of the Farm / Art DTour on October 4, one of the only days of his race where the weather was sunny. Sauk County officials installed traffic meters to assess the amount of traffic generated during the event. A casual examination of the license plates by this journalist showed that the visitors were coming from as far away as Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois and California.
Chris Zaph and several friends were part of the DTour both one and two days after the last weekend of the event, camped nearby and it was cool at night, enjoyed the general joy. “We’ve gone to 3 of them in the afterlife and we’re looking to revel in them again. As we camped, we listened to the owls calling each other. Locals take this kind of thing for granted,” he said.
Crystal Hoecherl, also from Milwaukee, added that they enjoyed some of the reports of aspects along the way, such as a hike to The Natural Bridge National Park, which is on the way, and a charm like a devoted sanctuary that reports along the DTour. Road.
Philip Matthews is Program Director at the Wormfarm Institute and notes that this is the eighth year of the DTour event, which has been held every year until 2016 and has been biennial since then; The next opportunity for visitors to collect art on the farm will come in 2022.
Contacted a few days after the occasion closed, he said they were still waiting for Sauk County road count figures, however, he and others estimated that there were about 22,000 cars on the journey during the nine days of the occasion. “We mucho. de positive responses from others who felt intelligent about fainting, in the context of Covid-19. We were told that they were satisfied and relieved to faint.
“Vendors and other people where other people were getting out of their cars to interact, listening to poetry or buying groceries from windows and roadside stalls, told us that they were all very respectful of keeping their distance and wearing masks.
Comments from artists and poets have also been positive, Matthews said. “A user of the color of an urban environment nervous to come and did not know what the reception would be, however he ended up moved and felt supported. This approach to the urban and urban rural neighbors is a beautiful thing to see.
The tour is designed to explore the links with the land and offer poetry along the road, spaced by successive symptoms along the way, educational notes on agriculture and for those who sought to hide and recover our cars, they can do so. grocery shopping at local road stalls and agricultural businesses. Cedar Grove cheese, closed on Sundays, remained open to visitors who came en masse to buy locally made cheese.
The local cheese shop, pumpkin stalls and other farms attracted Jenny Abel, who also came from Milwaukee to cross picturesque Sauk County over the weekend.
Matthews said the local shops that participated in the occasion were “delighted with the DTour. “A farmer, who promoted autumn decorations, was exhausted before the end of the occasion and had to move on to Christmas-themed ornamental items.
One of the emerging outlets featured ten artists, greatly affected by the Covid-19 crisis, promoting their original work. Together, they sold them $16,000 worth of pieces in those difficult times, he said.
Art installations also received enthusiastic reviews from interviewees, Matthews said. “They began to take an interest in works of art. ” The beginning of the process that brings these works closer to the occasion is a call for programs that opens at the end of winter, followed by a vannage through a jury of regional art professionals, the finalists decide and then refine their proposals.
While the art jury advises artists on their concepts, they are asked to take into account the breadth of their works when they are beaten in the field.
An artist, Pete Krsko, who built a piece called Epithelium for this year’s tour, lived in Eastern Europe when he had his first piece at the DTour. Matthew said he was so in love with the domain after that experience that he has since moved to Wonewoc. , Sauk County.
Another Cloud installation that turned out to be very “popular on Instagram,” Matthews said. The artist, Charlie Brouwer of Willis, Virginia, used a hundred wooden stairs given to him by the owner of a cherry orchard. Since obtaining these scales, the artist has used them to create other sculptural iterations at art exhibitions across the country. Here he helped through two painters of the construction of Sauk County to configure the work of art.
The paintings called Fluvial were created through 3 artists, Sheila Novak of Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts, Emilie Bouvier and Crysten Nesseth, any of Minneapolis, and featured 70 to 80 original posters published in Cyan, the power of the sun to create the photographs. with several Citizens of Sauk County and local stories and photographs superimposed on his artistic paintings, showing the flow of blue banners along Honey Creek. Matthews said artists hoped to offer or sell some of the banners to local citizens so that they simply stay in the area.
It indicates the occasion and on each occasion or artistic installation presented an agricultural measure by the precautions of the Covid-19 – “for social distance, separate a cow”.
Donna Neuwirth, executive director of the Wormfarm Institute, wrote that the occasion is designed to “talk about the abundance of land and ask that we first be curious, and then we care deeply about the farmers, the history and the lands that we have. “
He noted that the DTour takes a position “in an undecided county, in an undecided state” a month before the presidential election. “While we too understand each other divided, our long term and fortune are inextricably connected (albeit infrequently invisible) throughout the rural area. Urban continuum. The knee bone is connected to the femur.
The Farm Art DTour, he noted, was created as a valuable instance of joyful celebration and new air, and as some other artist pointed out, it is an excuse or a stage to look at the sky and the landscape and perceive everything.
Neuwirth said the DTour draws attention to the importance of what farmers do on a basis and reminds us of culture rooted in agriculture. “It’s a glimpse into the geological and human history of the earth and an invitation to get closer,” he said. Famous.
Many partners contribute to the good luck of the project, adding Art Works, Design Works, EFA (a family circle foundation), Rural Urban Flow, Grassland 2. 0, Kraemer Brothers (a giant construction company founded in Plain), Local Voices Network, McFarlanes’,’, Village of Plain, River Arts Inc. , Sauk County, Sauk Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce, UW Extension, Wisconsin Arts Board , Wisconsin Farmers Union, Wisconsin Humanities Council.
Funding for the projects comes from grants from: National Endowment for the Arts, Educational Foundation of America, sauk County Committee on Art and Culture, the Wisconsin Board of Arts, and the Wisconsin Humanities Council.