Pine Needles Artists-in-Residencies Announced

Artists and writers will interact with scientists, the community, and the river during this summer’s program.

The Pine Needles Cabin on the banks of the St. Croix (Greg Seitz, St. Croix 360)

The St. Croix Watershed Research Station, Science Museum of Minnesota, has announced the selection of the Summer 2014 Artists at Pine Needles. Dave Beck of Menomonie, Wisconsin, Anne Marie Queenan of St. Paul and David Spohn of Lindstrom will participate this summer.

This program of the research station provides residencies for natural history artists and writers at the research station’s Pine Needles cabin and offers interaction with environmental scientists and the local community. The residencies will begin in May and continue through late August.

For the first time, the program welcomes back a previous participant for a second residency. 3D digital artist and sculptor Beck (website) produced a digital animation titled “Log Jam” when he was an Artist at Pine Needles in 2010. Now teaching in the School of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, Beck produces new media with a historical and environmental focus. His residency plans are to design a 3D interactive video environment, incorporating themes from the exploration and development of the American Midwest.

Anne Marie Queenan (website) is a writer, video and documentary producer who has worked since 2008 on projects conveying important issues affecting the Minnesota River. She plans to develop an oral and video history/blog which profiles the natural history of the St. Croix River. She will collect and share stories, images, and sounds of the river valley.

David Spohn’s art has been focused on two fronts, the creation of books and the art of printmaking. He creates solar plate etchings; a recent series of dragonflies was supported by a McKnight Foundation Fellowship grant with selections included in the permanent collection at the University of Minnesota-Morris. He plans to delve deeply into the environment of the river valley and commit to creating art that both celebrates the river and educates about its challenges.

The Artist at Pine Needles program is held at the cabin of the late James Taylor Dunn, noted historian of the St. Croix River Valley, and fulfills his wishes that this property be used as a scholarly and artistic retreat. The St. Croix Watershed Research Station in Marine on St. Croix is the environmental research department of the Science Museum of Minnesota.