ANNA METCALFE: A LIVING TOPOGRAPHY: STORIES FROM LAKE SUPERIOR
ON VIEW MARCH 25, 2016 – MAY 8, 2016
A Living Topography: Stories from Lake Superior is a steel, ceramic, and mixed media piece that represents America's Lake Superior – physically and through the stories of people living, both past and present, around the lake. The porcelain boat hulls that hang down from the steel frame carry aspects of life of the lake on their surfaces: letters written by a young woman from Ashland, WI in 1863, pages from a diary written by a young Wisconsin teenager, and navigational charts of the Lake itself. Additionally, there are a series of boats imbedded in the piece that carry QR codes on their surfaces. Each of these codes lead viewers with smart phones to Geo Locations around the lake on Google Earth.
Timed to coincide with the 2016 NCECA conference and related activities, Wonder Fair has selected the work of Anna Metcalfe to highlight the important contributions of artists who practice at the intersection of public art, social justice, and craft. Just as Metcalfe works within her community in the Minneapolis area to inspire creative, investigative interactions between people and place, Wonder Fair hopes to inspire inquiry and introspection, while fostering community engagement with Art in Lawrence, Kansas.
About the Artist:
Anna Metcalfe lives and works in Minneapolis where she graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2009 with her MFA. Metcalfe currently works for Springboard for the Arts in St. Paul Minnesota. Interested in the junction of public art and craft, she makes work inspired by water, agriculture, food and community. As a teaching artist, Metcalfe loves to promote collaboration and interdisciplinary learning environments between the sciences and art-making. She is a recipient of a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist’s Project Grant for Public Art in 2009, a MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, a Jerome Foundation Study and Travel Grant in 2013 and most recently a FY 2015 MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant.