A Reflection by Sheila Novak

A Reflection

In 2020, I worked with fellow artists, community members and the land to create a field-scale work for the Farm/Art DTour. FLUVIAL, a stream of cyanotype banners, braided the stories of Ho-Chunk and farming families who live here with the Driftless landscape and Honey Creek. I can’t reflect on that summer without recalling the pandemic and how that year took twists and turns none of us could have anticipated.

Although we had proposed to work with the bright blue sun-print medium in November 2019, the way we made the banners radically shifted with the requirements for social distancing. Before the pandemic, we had proposed to facilitate workshops during the DTour. Our vision was to share the magic of cyanotypes which, when exposed to the sun, change from green to grey; then bright blue when we plunge the treated fabric into large vats of water, exposing the white marks of objects, plants and stories. But to be safe, we shifted to collecting stories and images through mail and collecting farm detritus and plants ourselves through a trip to the region.

For 10 days I lived with Emilie in Minneapolis. We opened letters from people sharing stories and images of the Driftless while checking into Zoom meetings for work. We raged on the sewing machines for hours while donning masks for daily trips to Menards. Crysten, Emilie and I spent nights dipping the sewn fabric triangles into light-sensitive chemical solutions in her garage-converted-darkroom to dry; we spent days exposing the banners with materials we had collected through mailings and our trip to southwest Wisconsin earlier that summer. The fact that we could create together at all amidst the stress of the pandemic is amazing to me. The fact that we shifted our methods to continue holding the stories of the community and the land was essential. The fact that we received support and built relationships with folks in the region is what makes this project so memorable. And the fact that we created something we were proud of? Delightful. The truth is, I was so grateful to finally be in physical proximity to creative people, to be able to hold a friend, to grumble about grommets.

FLUVIAL dramatically impacted me. We created a mile path through pasture & marsh and an artwork that tied together histories and ecology as we told the stories of the land, people and water along Honey Creek. We found resilience in unprecedented times. We centered creativity as a tool for transformation and connection. Its methods and ideas and joy continue in my work to this day.

Sheila Novak is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and public art specialist living in Boston. With Emilie Bouvier and Crysten Nesseth, she created FLUVIAL for the 2020 DTour. Learn more about their project and see the full list of collaborators at sheilanovak.com/FLUVIAL.

SHEILA NOvAK