Indiana Waterways
The Art of Conservation
Dedicated to the women and men of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, whose job it is to study and manage the natural resources of our waterways.
ARTISTS OFTEN BEGIN WITH AN IDEA but later say the painting had a mind of its own and the piece went in totally another direction. Thus was the case with the Indiana Waterways project. Its evolution gained a momentum of its own. Like the four stages of a butterfly from egg to adult, the metamorphosis from the seed of this themed painting idea began during the COVID-19 pandemic, merely as something for friends to do until society reopened.
In February and March 2020 in the United States, COVID-19 began to change everyone’s daily lives and professional activities. All the artists on the project and “The Art of Conservation,” are members of the Indiana Plein Air Painters Association (IPAPA). Its monthly scheduled outings fell like dominos. Unlike business meetings that switched to online venues, live large outdoor art events like plein air gatherings of artists, didn’t lend themselves to online applications.
Fears of the pandemic forced the community of New Harmony, Indiana to disinvite the IPAPA event, the First Brush of Spring, which for the past 20 years attracted more than 100 artists to the scenic historic town. All the events, exhibitions and gatherings of many other organizations theproject artists belonged to also dropped from their calendars.
At the time, the medical and scientific community had few answers about when all of society might return to being able to meet in groups and attend public events. The vaccines had not been developed yet. During the fall of 2020, society had some guidelines to allow people to meet outside or in small groups with spacing and personal protections. By then, most artists used social media or the telephone to stay in touch, forming small circles of friends. This pairing happened organically, based on each cluster’s self-interests. Communication among artists certainly remained broad, but COVID forced many artists to communicate more intentionally with a limited number of other artists, much as they would do on the side at in-person painting events.
Through social media, the group of artists featured in this book found comfort in regular conversation. Isolation from other artists was universal, something some discovered difficult. Not knowing when or if any of our annual events would return to normal in 2020, or into 2021, I asked the four artists in my close circle if they wanted to take on a project to paint Indiana rivers.
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The initial idea was intended to facilitate painting alone and then exhibit the collection 18 months later as a group. It was something we could all do if COVID restrictions continued. We could at least share our paintings among ourselves and feel less isolated. The project began in August 2020 with four of the five artists meeting at an outdoor barbecue to flesh out the approach.
Because Dan Woodson in 1998 formed a group of five artists to paint all 92 counties and exhibit them around Indiana, and I had just finished helping IPAPA put together a traveling exhibition, our group had examples to use as blueprints to guide the process. Both of these traveling exhibitionsproduced publications: a book and an extended catalog for the latter. We agreed to use Dan’s experience as our guide. Within weeks of proposing a group show before we met, the project had now added a book with all 100 paintings, in case a venue on the tour could not show all 100.
Within a month of the barbecue, the president of the zaak Walton League of America-Indiana Division wanted to help sponsor some of the costs of the project. He saw what we were doing as a way to bring attention to waterway conservation. We could use art to help communicate conservation.
An Idea Takes Shape
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From left: Tom Woodson, John Kelty, Avon Waters and Dan Woodson during an August 2020 outdoor barbecue.
Since the advent of photography to record our world, many now consider art decorative, even a luxury item. The Roman Catholic Church once used art to communicate the stories of the Bible to a nearly illiterate public. From the time humans first took a charred stick out of the fire in a cave and drew pictures of great hunts and battles and then used colored mineral and animal blood to paint the images in color, art once was essential to communicate in all human cultures.
Empowered to once again be able to use art for a just social cause, the idea of partnering with more conservationists led to even more changes. By October 2020, we decided to include the entire Indiana waterway system, approximately 65,000 miles to record a minimum of 20 Indiana waterwaysin multiple seasons.​​
The decision to communicate conservation required the addition of writers – Indiana writers. One of the best writers of nonfiction, Susan Neville, turned down a request but suggested Jason Goldsmith, whose writing already featured environmental research. Neville, however, stayed on to write an Indiana Humanities grant and act as an advisor. Another environmental writer, Carson Gerber, joined the essay team.
As time passed, we discovered the third essayist, Dr. Jerry Sweeten. For about 20 years, he was involved in a quest to restore the Eel River and had accumulated a mountain of research about habitat improvements after performing even the smallest changes to water condition. He agreed to share his experience using a memoir form. His essay on the Eel River restoration can be considered a blueprint for how any waterway in the Midwest can be restored, given the community’s willpower to demand action.
Goldsmith’s work as a creative non-fiction writer and Gerber’s background of using reporting techniques as an investigative journalist reflect the wide spectrum we artists have in our own styles of art. The three featured essays differ in their approach to their subject: Sweeten’s is scientific with the qualities of a memoir, Gerber’s is about the history of the Izaak Walton League and the work they do with projects such as Save Our Streams (SOS). Goldsmith’s story of the White River basin provides entertainment, but upon further examination, also communicates the historical struggles of the Indigenous Peoples and African American communities, as well as the forgotten rural communities that our economy tends to not address today.