$5.00 Parking
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 artworks and artists participating in this multi-state event celebrating art, nature, and our relationship with the land.
12:00pm-4:00pm - 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!
12:00pm-1:00pm – A 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.
12:00pm-1:00pm – 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.
1:00pm-1:30pm - Unveiling and activation of “City Lights Orchestra” by Andy Graydon
Gather on the back patio of Franconia Commons for the official opening of “City Lights Orchestra by Andy Grandon, 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.
1:30-2:30pm - Field Recording and Soundwalk with Nick Chatfield-Taylor
Convene at Franconia Commons for a soundwalk through Franconia with artist Nick Chatfield-Taylor. Participants will attune to the natural sounds of Franconia through mindful listening exercises and have an opportunity to create their own field recordings that can be incorporated into future sound works at Franconia.
2:30pm-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.
3:30-4:00pm - 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.