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Ravensholme on the River

Megan Muthupandiyan: Artist in Residence at Tall Pines Conservancy

June 15, 2023  |  Topics: featured artist


The Natural Realm presents Megan Muthupandiyan, who is among 12 artists participating in a year-long residency program called ARTservancy, a collaboration between Gallery 224 in Port Washington and the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, River Revitalization Foundation, Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy, Tall Pines Conservancy, and Western Great Lakes Bird & Bat 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.

Editor’s note: This is not a traditional residency, in which the artist spends their year “in residence” at a single preserve. My photographs of Megan Muthupandiyan were taken at Ravensholme on the River, which is an operating farm rather than a publicly accessible preserve. Tall Pines Conservancy, like many other land trusts, protects farmland from development through conservation easements, as well as protecting other open spaces. Muthupandiyan’s residency takes her to multiple farms being protected by Tall Pines.

Megan Muthupandiyan at Ravensholme on the River.
Megan Muthupandiyan at Ravensholme on the River. Photo by Eddee Daniel

Artist’s Statement by Megan Muthupandiyan 

“Find the pattern, and you’ll see the design.” 

As these these words were uttered by a presenter at Tall Pines Conservancy this spring, my ARTservancy project was seeded.  

As a public humanities artist, my work is inspired by the natural places I move through.  The goal, most often, is to create participatory art—to have the human members of land communities engage more deeply with that place, and one another, through shared participation in an art installation, oral history project, or writing activity. 

Each acre of land protected through Tall Pines Conservancy’s land trust is a labor of long memory, deep passion, and great love. Not by the few, but the many.  Establishing a land trust requires an extraordinary level of collaboration from many, many stakeholders. It is, like the quilts I will be making during my residency, a patchwork of efforts and energies from a great many people, past and present. 

Muthupandiyan with a mock up of a planned quilt.
Muthupandiyan with a mock up of a planned quilt. Photo by Eddee Daniel.

Each of the picture quilts, like the land trusts themselves, is a co-creation, pieced together from the donated work clothes of the people who have put their efforts into protecting this land in perpetuity. They are bespoke, and their design, while inspired by the protectorates themselves, is completely tied to—and limited by—the work (clothes) of those who have contributed so much to the future. 

There is so much at risk if we do not cultivate a fierce and abiding love for the land communities to which we belong.  Only a wild and wise love for the here that bears us can lead us to take less from the world and protect and defend more of it.  As a multimedia visual artist, poet and essayist, I believe that cultivating that love lies in the realms of ritual, art, and myth.

What’s at stake? 

Everything.

What’s the challenge? 

Our attention has become a commodity, for one.  Another challenge just might be the volume of evidence we have about the magnitude of the problems we face. We humans are prone to fall into a state of inaction when we feel overwhelmed by the information we have about, well, everything

Gallery

Study Photo: This spring I visited Mason Creek with Tall Pines’ Executive Director, Susan Buchanan. This stream restoration project involved re-meandering the stream to reduce the movement of phosphorus laden sentiment.
Blocking Sketch:  By blocking out the major color areas and shapes in the photo, I created an abstract image of Mason Creek, from the perspective I had seen it during my visit.  Then I visited a local resale shop and picked up a sampling of donated fabrics, in an attempt to reproduce the situation, I will have with this project–a completely randomized collection of donated materials to work with.
Initial Study: This initial mockup of Mason Creek, is an applique quilt panel.  As a test study, I have been experimenting with different techniques to create texture and shape.  Each quilt will be designed around the fabric that is donated.  

Each August I participate in the international Postcard Poetry Exchange sponsored by Cascadia Poetics in Washington by illustrating poetry postcards that illuminate my original poems.

Postcard on Spinning Grass. Postcard Poetry Exchange
Spread: Postcards on Spinning Grass
Spread: Postcards on Spinning Grass. Postcard Poetry Exchange
Be Copy. Postcard Poetry Exchange.
High Summer and After the Rain 1.
High Summer and After the Rain 2: Elm Grove Park inspires me as an artist. I generally use my photographs as tools in my artistic field study, but these two moments, captured in 2020, make my heart sing.
Untitled. I walk between five and ten miles a day.  Many of my illustrations are done in the field or in conjunction with field studies. during those walks, as is the case with these illustrations. 
Mandala 1.
Mandala 2.
Study of Swallows:  My daughter lovingly refers to me as a bird groupie . . .probably because of the ever expanding flock of swallows I’ve painted in Japanese ink. 2011. 

Bio

No matter what media I have used, I have always been an artist of place, sketching, drawing and painting flora and fauna I have encountered in the world. My illustrations have always engaged in creative play with my poems and essays—the imagist quality of one giving rise to, or augmenting the thematic scheme of the other, as they do in my most recent collection of poems, Forty Days in the Wilderness Wandering.

Over the past five years I developed two public humanities projects to bring ritual and art back into the life of the land communities I belong to—and to bring those land communities onto the digital platforms where people are.  The first initiative was @elm_grove_park, a community park page on Instagram that offered participants an artful once-a-day photo and caption of what was coming into bloom or decaying in our land community, what had risen or fallen, arrived or departed. The ongoing photographic essay was initially designed to ignite viewers’ attention to the beauty-truth the land community offers us (if, as Thoreau admonishes us, we would only see!); since I have taken a position at UW Superior and am no longer walking the park every day, it continues to be a platform for community residents and visitors to share photos of their daily nature and social sightings.  

Megan Muthupandiyan with Susan Buchanan, Executive Director of Tall Pines Conservancy, at Ravensholme on the River.
Megan Muthupandiyan with Susan Buchanan, Executive Director of Tall Pines Conservancy, at Ravensholme on the River. Photo by Eddee Daniel


A second public humanities project I founded is called Poetry in the Parks. Poetry in the Parks is a project that engages the public to create short poetry films in public or communally held lands. Within each instillation, a national, state or local park is celebrated through the words of a poet . . . and a poem is celebrated through the beauty of a park.  

The project’s mission is to increase participants’ abilities to see, to borrow Thoreau’s words . . . that is, to increase their awareness of the mystery, majesty and delight that is constantly revealing itself in the land communities to which we belong. A secondary and no less important goal is to make the serious delight of poetry accessible to people everywhere.  

My work with Tall Pines Conservancy and ARTservancy this year will be the third public humanities project that I’ve designed.  Notably, it is not a digitally based project; it will involve a large number of co-creators, and will require a large level of coordination!  I am grateful to Susan Buchanan of Tall Pines Conservancy and Kelly Alexander-Wendorf and Pam Strohl at ARTservancy for facilitating this latest project.  I have every belief that the art we are co-creating will foster attention and delight for a world so deserving of our devotion. 

For more on Meg Muthpandiyan’s creative work, please visit her at meganmuthupandiyan.com.  More information on Poetry in the Parks can be found at the project website, poetryintheparks.org.

This residency is sponsored by Tall Pines Conservancy.

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 2022-2023 ARTservancy artists in residence is currently being exhibited monthly at Gallery 224. To meet the other ARTservancy artists in residence, click here.

All images courtesy of the artist, except as noted. Tall Pines Conservancy is a project partner of A Wealth of Nature. The featured photo at the top is by Eddee Daniel.