Matt Groshek: Artist in Residence at Decorah Woods Preserve
September 21, 2026 | Topics: Articles, featured artist
The Natural Realm presents Matt Groshek, who was among 10 artists participating in a year-long residency program called ARTservancy; he served in the 2024-25 cohort. ARTservancy is a collaboration between Gallery 224 in Port Washington and the Restoring Lands Land Trust, 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 Artist
My engagement for the ARTservancy residency was with the Decorah Woods Preserve. I chose this space because of its history and current state of change. I am a steward of 40 cares of land as well. It is our family homestead (or small holding), which served my family with food and other resources when I was growing up. I now live there with my partner as we rebuild and reinhabit landscapes with plantings, harvesting and re-planting farm fields and other spaces —much like what is happening at Decorah.
While Decorah is a unique landscape for many reasons, I was less interested in the aspects of “nature” that it presented and was much more interested in the people who tend and care for it. In the end, my work is about gardens, gardening, and the people, methods and tools employed to create a landscape that is “healthy” and regenerative.
While this idea is fraught with challenges of control, freedom, wildness, and what nature is and what humans are supposed to do with it, the effort to care for these lands is massive and worthy of acknowledgment. As in any relationship, the stewards and the land must establish some kind of trust. The idea that this space (and others in the conservancy trust), depend on mutually established approaches to caring for the land, with the realization that, over time, the land responds in some manner. In short, a compact of trust between those planning and working, and the land itself as it responds to that work.
The photographs I made were my attempt to record some small part of this work of trust. While I visited the Decorah site many times, twice I attended and participated as a volunteer on workdays to assist in planting trees and removing invasive plants. During that time, I stepped out of that work to photograph the conservancy crews doing their work.
I was struck by this work, as it seemed both tender and ruthless. Workers carefully located suitable sites for trees, cleared space and in some cases transplanted other plants they wished to preserve, and then planted what amounted to sticks into the forest floor. All with care.
In turn I also saw the work crews cut invasive brush and move it to piles to decompose. I also saw them using herbicides, carefully applying the liquid to the blunt tops of cut woody stems in order to prevent regrowth.
While working with the restoration crews, I watched for and documented the gestures of people as they handled tools and plants. I was impressed by the care and almost automatic gestures that those working performed as they planted and worked. These movements were beautiful and profound.
I was also struck by the dedication of the work crews and their clear comradery. They revealed a realistic approach to what amounts to a monumental task of assisting a forest community to regain and secure a foothold of living in these spaces.
It was a pleasure for me to both see the existing landscape of Decorah and try to understand it over time. At each visit I observed the energy and work as trees were planted, and invasive plants were removed and piled as brush. Returning each time, I also saw subtle shifts of habitat as the land responded to that action.
For me, a year seemed hardly enough time to understand this work, or the land itself.
Gallery
All digital photographs printed with inkjet on archival paper
Bio
I am an artist, designer, educator, and curator whose work centers on cultural stories formed of visual and spatial narratives. I am interested in an overarching theme of “place” through investigations of rural social networks, food systems, and domestic and rural labor as they impact constructions of place-identity.
I am the recipient of numerous grants in support of this research and civic engagement projects. As a consultant and facilitator, I have developed and designed exhibitions collaboratively with SPCA Tampa Bay,\; the Bell Museum of Natural History, and the Weisman Museum of Art, both in Minneapolis, MN; the Percussive Arts Society Rhythm! Discovery Center in Indianapolis (IUPUI), IN; and many other institutions. During my 25-year career as an exhibition developer and designer, I have worked with the Boerner Botanical Gardens, the Urban Ecology Center and the Humane Society of Wisconsin, all located in Milwaukee, WI.
I have also curated exhibitions at the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, the Edna Carlsten Gallery at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point and the Target Studio for Creative Collaboration at the Weisman Museum of Art in Minneapolis, MN.
I have traveled to Bellagio, Italy, as part of an international team of designers working on the global GreenMap project and completed the Milwaukee GreenMap project in the early 2000’s. I have visited and taught in areas of Russia as an artist/educator as part of a naturalist exchange program.
I have taught design and art at the university level at a variety of institutions including the Herron School of Art at IUPUI, where I specialized in community scholarship through exhibition design. More recently, I taught at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point and administered the program in graphic design.
I currently hold the position of professor emeritus at UW Stevens Point. I also am the principal of the interpretive design firm, education design link (EDL), and facilitate a cultural residency program called sedge meadow at my farm. We host various creative practitioners and support their work with space, time and good food.
I work and live in Rudolph Wisconsin with my partner and am restoring my 40-acre family farmstead and the natural landscape and habitat. This is the same farm where I grew up. An avid skywatcher and telescope builder, I enjoy observing the night sky and other natural phenomenon from this rural location.
More information about Decorah Woods Preserve is on our Find-a-Park page.
This residency is sponsored by Restoring Lands: A Wisconsin Land Trust.
Additional ARTservancy artists in residence, from the 2025-26 cohort, at other sites 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 2024-2025 ARTservancy artists in residence is currently being exhibited monthly at Gallery 224. 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 Matt Groshek at Decorah Woods Preserve is by Eddee Daniel. Restoring Lands is a project partner of A Wealth of Nature.
The Natural Realm blog is part of A Wealth of Nature, which is a project of Preserve Our Parks.
About Preserve Our Parks
Preserve Our Parks, Inc. is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of parks and green spaces. Our mission: To advocate for and promote Milwaukee area parks and open spaces and to strive to protect the tenets of Wisconsin’s Public Trust Doctrine.
For more than 25 years, we have been a leader in advocating for the protection of Milwaukee County park lands, halting many proposals to develop, privatize, or sell local parkland and lakefront spaces. More information about POP, including past accomplishments, is available at www.preserveourparks.org.