Lindsay Lochman and Barbara Ciurej: Artists in Residence in Fellenz Woods Preserve
May 10, 2025 | Topics: featured artist
The Natural Realm presents collaborators Lindsay Lochman and Barbara Ciurej, who are among 12 artists participating in a year-long residency program called ARTservancy, now in its fifth year. ARTservancy is a collaboration between Gallery 224 in Port Washington and the Restoring Lands Land Trust, (formerly Ozaukee Washington Land Trust and River Revitalization Foundation). Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy, Tall Pines Conservancy, and Lake Michigan Bird Observatory. The mission of ARTservancy is to promote the visionary work of both the artists and conservationists. Each artist has selected a preserve to spend time in and to engage with.
Reflections from the Artists
By Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman
We have been collaborating for many years co-creating photographic projects. We often approach a topic differently: researching, sharing and shaping ideas. In time, our directions converge as we shape the final iteration together. The process becomes an ecosystem of interrelated ideas.
The Milwaukee River and its entangled histories drew us to Fellenz Woods. We each photographed the preserve throughout our ARTservancy residency. We ultimately combined our images, entwining vision, river, woods and prairie.
Field Notes from Barbara
The meandering Milwaukee River caps the north end of the site, straightens south, then takes a hard bend westward. Farmland lines the east side of the preserve. The two-lane blacktop of Decorah Road marks its southern border. West Bend Municipal Airport sits across the river and small planes buzz the sky, along with swooping terns and myriad insects. The 60 acres of native grasses and flowers planted by volunteers are edged by a lowland forest and 50 acres of virgin floodplains. The river feeds it all.
Pulling into the parking area and heading onto a mowed path through the tall grass, I became aware of how Fellenz Woods is marked by boundaries, borders and private property signs. The imposed and limiting human barriers give the illusion that we are separate from nature, but the elemental world of wind and clouds, pollinators, birds and seeds do not obey these strictures.
To express the purposeful mechanisms and relational coexistence of plant life that flourishes in Fellenz Woods and beyond its margins, I created assemblages that dissolve boundaries through multiple spatialities and temporalities.
In “To Hear Plants Speak” Michal Marder questions the feasibility of such an enterprise: “What kind of hearing must we resort to and what sort of speech corresponds to it? How to translate the language, or the languages, of plants into terms that are intelligible within the scope of our human languages? […] What are the conditions of possibility for a cross-kingdoms translation and what is the place of the untranslatable in it?”
The very act of trying to present a story in collaboration with the natural world is a process of being in renewed relation to it.
Field Notes from Lindsay
Initially, I observed the river flowing from a single vantage point, a front row seat to view and measure the passage of time. However, at every visit I am repeatedly struck by movement all around me. I sat through shifting seasons embraced by the texture of the air, listened to the surface of the water, experienced the atmosphere. It was clear that the idea of time is a constructed matrix. Geology, astronomy, history are the imposition of a human narrative. The world around us functions out of time. The landscape is a continuous event — roiling, rupturing, glitching and heaving. A living organism with its own agenda and unbound logic.
I interpret the landscape in this way using the panorama format, which required movement of camera, but with no preconception of the final image. These images suggest a landscape defining itself.
Works in progress:
This 16-foot-long panorama book, folded in intervals, embeds expansion and contraction, emergence and simultaneity. The panorama is hyper-seeing; consolidating a wide view into a single image depicting more than our eyes can take in a single glance. We consider this book an unfurling history—a record of time and space, forward and backward. The river that we see is a glimpse of this continuum. It began long before we meet it and flows past us.
Change is the constant in nature. We marvel at how time and its measure, both deceptive and disorienting, shape the human experience. Our cameras capture a fraction of this immensity. By combining our impressions, we mirror the interconnected worlds of Fellenz Woods.
Repeated visits to Fellenz Woods have been an opportunity to observe, listen and intensify our relationship with the natural world. In September of 2025, we will exhibit our ARTservancy residency project at Gallery 224.
Gallery
BIO
Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman collaborate on photographic projects that address the confluence of history, myth and popular culture. Since they met as students at the Institute of Design in Chicago, they have combined their mutual interest in the storytelling potential of the photographic medium to investigate the social landscape. A continuing thread in their work is an examination of the domestic realm.
Their work has been exhibited in the US and internationally and is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, H2 Contemporary Museum/Germany, Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Walker Art Center, and Worcester Art Museum. Their artists’ books are in the collections of the Yale Center for British Art, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Joan Flasch Artists Book Collection, and Bainbridge Island Arts Museum among others.
In addition to their shared photographic practice, they are contributing editors to the photographic journal Lenscratch. They maintain studios in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois.
For more information about Fellenz Woods Preserve go to our Find-a-Park page. This residency was sponsored by Restoring Lands Land Trust (formerly Ozaukee Washington Land Trust and River Revitalization Foundation).
Related stories:
Todd Mrozinski: Artist in residence at Fellenz Woods
Fellenz Woods Preserve: A controlled burn
Additional ARTservancy artists in residence can be found here.
This is the latest in our series of featured artists, which is intended to showcase the work of photographers, artists, writers and other creative individuals in our community whose subjects or themes relate in some broad sense to nature, urban nature, people in nature, etc. To see a list of previously featured artists, click here. The work of the 2023-2024 ARTservancy artists in residence is currently being exhibited monthly at Gallery 224. Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman were among the 2023-24 cohort of artists. To meet the other ARTservancy artists in residence, click here and then use the drop down menu.
All images courtesy of the artist, except as noted. The featured photo at the top of Lindsay Lochman and Barbara Ciurej holding a mock up of one of their books inspired by the Milwaukee River (background) is by Eddee Daniel. Restoring Lands is a project partner of A Wealth of Nature.