4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial | June-August 2022

4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial is a project of Franconia Sculpture Park taking place across the Upper Midwest in collaboration with more than 20 arts, environmental, and tribal organizations. Designed to raise awareness of environmental issues affecting our communities and the history of Native land art in the region, 4Ground is an opportunity for audiences to take self-directed road trips to experience site-specific land art and more than 30 FREE public programs across the region. For more information and a full calendar of events, please visit www.4groundbiennial.org or find us on Instagram @4groundbiennial.

See Land Art Works at Franconia

Sound Healing Performance with Simiya Sudduth | July 17, 5:00 PM

Join Franconia Artist-in-Residence Simiya Sudduth for a healing sound bath outside at the park. Simiya is a mother, multidisciplinary artist, and wellness practitioner, currently living in St. Louis, MO. She maintains a fluid creative practice influenced by her work as a wellness practitioner, that explores the intersections of health, wellness, ecology, social justice, and spirituality. Simiya’s expansive creative practice ranges from creating illustrations to artist-farming, installation, and experimental sound healing performances. See full event details here.

Pre-sale closed, tickets available for purchase day of event at Franconia Sculpture Park.

Dakota Spirit Walk with artist Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota) | July 17, 1:00 PM

Join Franconia in St. Paul for “Dakota Spirit Walk”, a permanent, augmented reality public art installation that honrs, educates, and connects visitors to Dakota history, culture and significance of land through the art and storytelling of Marlena Myles, Spirit Lake Dakota. The artist will be present to discuss the development of this project and their upcoming work for 4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial at Indian Mounds Park. Ticket Sales for this Event have Ended.

An Afternoon of Sound, Scent & Performance at Franconia | August 20th, 12pm-4pm

Join Franconia for an afternoon celebrating the sights, sounds, and smells of summer through the unique lens of artists working in various media. As part of the 4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial, this event allows participants to have a deeper engagement with the various land art works and artists participating in this multi-state event celebrating art, nature, and our relationship with the land.

12pm-4pm – Climate Chaser Backyard Phenology

Join Christine Bauemler, Christian Bell, and Maria Park for a “Sharing Climate Change” storytelling event in the University of Minnesota’s “Climate Chaser” recording studio!

12pm-1pm Beekeeping Workshop with Bone Lake Meadows Apiary

Join Mike Mackiewicz from Bone Lake Meadows Apiary in the Driscoll Education Center at Franconia Commons for a brief tutorial on beekeeping. Participants will then visit Franconia’s hives and meet our bees-in-residence up close. Courtesy of Compeer Financial.

12pm-1pm – tour of Land Art at Franconia with 4Ground Curator

Convene at Franconia Commons for a special tour of all the Land Art at Franconia created for the 4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial.

1pm-1:30pm – Unveiling and Activation of “City Lights Orchestra” by Andy Graydon and Sara Pajunen

Gather on the back patio of Franconia Commons for the official opening of “City Lights Orchestra by Andy Graydon, an artist and filmmaker originally from Hawai’i. His work is concerned with natural and social cologies, and with sound and listening as creative practices. “City Lights Orchestra” will be on display at Franconia through 2024; functioning as both sculptural assemblage and collective instrument, the work is a sculpture-in-the-making, an ongoing composition performed in both structure and sound. Sara Pajunen is a composer-improviser and an audiovisual artist. Trained as a violinist and employing locally-responsive media ranging from field recordings to drone imagery, her work is motivated by interactions between her ancestral roots, American cultural histories, and connection to our environments through sound.

1:30-2:30pm – Field Recording and Soundwalk

Franconia Executive Director and Chief Curator Ginger Shulick Porcella will lead participants in a series of Deep Listening activities. Attuning to different sounds of the park, participants will record their observations and create their own field recordings, which can then be incorporated into a sound sculpture at Franconia.

2:30-3:30pm – Scent Walk with Alex Young and Lindsey french

Join 4Ground Artists Alex Young and Lindsey french as they return to Franconia after their 2000-kilometer journey of the Line 3 pipeline from Alberta to Superior where they deposited scent poems created at Franconia along the pipeline’s margins via ceramic vessels. Now, they offer a new form of attunement–not only to the airborne signals of plants, but the ways we are already participating in airborne signaling with the environment through scent walks and olfactory experience of the pipeline’s petro signals.

3:30-4pm – Rewilding the Prairie with Rachel Frank

Franconia is pleased to bring Rachel Frank back to Franconia as part of 4Ground for a series of participatory performances. “Rewilding the Prairie” will highlight Franconia’s role in the restoration of the prairie through preservation and traditional land management practices. Participants will be invited to use a ceramic rhyton vessel to symbolically rewild the landscape with an offering of water. This performance will also connect with Frank’s sculpture currently installed within the prairie grasses at the park, Pollinator Rhyton: Agave and Bats.

Parking $5/car.